ABC Holiday Extras
1 March 2006
Category: Leisure & Tourism
Location: South West England
Size: Large
Application: Buy & Sell Online
ABC Holiday Extras provides a booking system that allows ABTA travel agents to arrange secure airport parking, accommodation, airport transfers and travel insurance. It linked up with Media Works Interactive to create a multimedia solution for the travel industry aimed at replacing telephone or old-fashioned Viewdata bookings. The system is now on-line on the Internet and is a fully interactive e-commerce Web site. The Web site is fully integrated with ABC's reservations system and is, therefore, automatically updated. It allows foreign travel agents a direct way of booking for themselves, in real-time, on-screen. Initial success was gained when a large German tour firm started to use the system and the largest of American travel agencies began to take an interest. As more and more trade opportunities with business tour operators from all over the world arose, ABC decided to concentrate its efforts on the business market rather than the private individual customers. The initial project, part funded by the Multimedia Demonstrator Programme, has been so successful that it no longer exists - it's been superseded by an even better, multi-functional Web site, built on the success of the first. More than a million people use the site each year." One of our ambitions for the project was to have one of the first fully transactional sites in the industry, and we've achieved it," says ABC's director Anthony Williams. "This includes a fully integrated credit card authorisation system." The consortium has benefited from the creation and launch of the Web site in many ways, not least from the first-hand experience in e-commerce it has gained. The company itself has profited from lower transaction costs, and the globalisation of the World Wide Web has opened up opportunities abroad. Electronic transactions, rather than manual bookings, are a cheaper more effective way for the industry to do business. The travel industry is becoming an increasingly competitive marketplace. This is good news for the ABC Holidays Extras interactive reservation system. It continues to be developed, with plans including introducing additional products and allowing for greater customisation.
