TUI Travelproudly announced yesterday that its UK division will be getting a brand new reservation system courtesy of Anite - but didn't explain why it is perhaps so urgent.
UK-based travel technology company Anite will be charged with implementing its @comRes reservation platform across the mainsteam holidays business in the UK and Ireland.
Anite's system was introduced to the same division in Germany, part of a wider move being touted by TUI as a shift away from "legacy systems to seamless integrated reservation platforms".
But how "legacy" are these legacy systems?
Well it turns out that the UK mainstream business's reservation system which is about to be upgraded is currently run on a platform called Tracs, built in-house around 40 years ago.
Yes, one of Europe's busiest booking platforms for one of the most high profile package holiday companies in Europe was built in the early 1970s.
This nugget of information will no doubt see supposed agile-focussed startups raising their eyes to the skies - but this has actually been the way of the (travel) world for generations.
On the one hand these giants of the European travel industry (Thomas Cook has been trying to upgrade its own platform with varying degrees of success for over two years) have run huge volume businesses on ancient systems for decades with very little problems, at least that they are willing to admit to.
But change is coming to these types of businesses, as systems covering reporting, payments, back-office, CRM, social, customer service and mobile have evolved massively in recent years.
Such evolution doesn't happen quickly - a TUI official confirms the UK implementation of @comRes platform will be up and running by the Spring of 2014.
The German transition to @comRes took around four years to implement. TUI systems in Austria and Switzerland have now also been changed.