The latest systems news, launches and more from around the travel, tourism and hospitality industry in August 2013.
Wednesday 28 August 2013:Monday 26 August 2013:- Baidu, China's leading search engine has updated its Maps app with streetview. The new feature called 'Total view' is similar to Google's Streetview concept.
Thursday 22 August 2013:- AirAsia Expedia has selected Anaplan to improve its budget forecasting and planning across the region. The challenge for AirAsia Expedia was the integration of data from its parent companies Air Asia and Expedia. The startup was processing data from its 22 point of sale and 14 channels in linked spreadsheets that ran upto 60MB in file size and upto 400 formulas in it. Now, with Anaplan's cloud-based system, AirAsia Expedia's team will be able to manage finance and addition of point of sales easily.
- In an effort to reduce fuel costs, Malaysia Airlines has announced to implement SITA’s FMS Wind Uplink service in 40 aircrafts. This service constantly updates key Flight Management System (FMS) calculations, so the airline can adjust flight plans according to changing wind and weather conditions. During trials, Wind Uplink delivered savings of up to 600 kg of fuel on a single flight sector.
Wednesday 21 August 2013:- Indonesia's flagship airline Garuda Indonesia is now using Alibaba's Alipay as one of its payment gateway. Recently, we wrote about Alibaba's increasing activity in travel industry. The airline is also in talks with few Chinese payment gateways to facilitate Chinese travellers.
Monday 19 August 2013:- Travelport renews technology agreement with Uniglobe Let's Go. The east African has signed a three-year deal to use Travelport's Smartpoint tools, Agentivity and Mobile Agent.
- Sabre extends IT partnership with Mosaid Travel and Tourism. The Saudi Arabian travel agency group will continue to use the Sabre Red agency desktop platform.
- Deem (formerly Rearden Commerce) has updated its Deem@Work product to increase savings and improve control for corporations dealing with travel and expense management. Updates to the product include multi-level policy control, corporate specific negotiated rates, partner defined site messaging, corporate card support, reporting and analytics, multi-level approval workflow.
Thursday 8 August 2013:- Multicom, the travel technology specialist has integrated Expedia Affiliate Network (EAN) into its booking platform FindandBook. This booking platform is used by many tour operators and travel agents including Thomas Cook, Tui and Easyjet. This partnership gives FindandBook access to EAN's 160,000 hotel inventory across the globe.
- Mantic Point, itinerary management solutions provider has launched OpenItinerary Nexus - a new service that allows business travel buyers to easily capture and manage travel data and bookings across multiple sources (GDS, mid-office systems etc). TMCs, other corporations and travellers will have better insight and control over their travel itineraries.
- In Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) 2013, Concur launched TripLink – a suite of Concur solutions for corporate customers and travel management companies (TMCs) to capture every booking and control program leakage. The solution is a combination of the Concur Open Booking product and its recently acquired TripLink technology from GDSx. Few more updates from Concur:
a) Concur T&E Cloud has gained two new hotel customers - La Quinta and Marriot International. Concur will enable corporate travel booked from these hotel branded websites to automatically appear in Concur products.
b) Adelman Travel, a new preferred partner of Concur, will become the first North American reseller of the new Concur Risk Management global security platform.
c) American Express has partnered with Concur's ExpenseIt, a receipt capture application. This integration will allow customers to upload AmEx business transactions to expense reports in real-time with the snap of a photo.
Monday 5 August 2013:- In an effort to grow organically by keeping the costs down, Biman Bangladesh Airlines has signed a 10-year agreement (multi-million dollar) with SITA to upgrade the airline's global network and operational messaging, manage network infrastructure. SITA will deploy new PABX with enhanced functionality at Biman’s offices in Dhaka, which will be integrated into the airline’s call center. SITA will also offer flexible, on-demand IT services and industry software through the ATI Cloud. Biman will deploy SITA’s CrewTablet to power its crew members with tablets integrated with its business applications to enhance inflight services to customers.
Thursday 1 August 2013:- Rezgo celebrates one million customer milestone for clients. The Canada-based company, which celebrates six years of operations this year, says its portfolio of small tour operators have secured around $90.4 million in bookings so far on the back on 376,000 processed bookings. It has also released some data pointing towards a 18% decline in desktop bookings since 2009 and 75% of customers book tours of less than $100.
- nuTravel selected to by JetBlue to build business travel platform. The New York, US-based technology provider will create a service for the airline through which corporate travellers can shop and book air, car rental and hotel services, as well as earn points on the carrier's loyalty programme.
- PathWrangler and Formstack unite to give tour guides better admin tools. Users will be able to organise outdoor expeditions and guided tours using new accounting and registration services, create itineraries, packing lists and other details associated with a trip. [PathWrangler TLabs here]
Previous roundups:NB: Tech systems image via Shutterstock.