e-Travel, the global leader in online travel solutions and the e-commerce business unit of Amadeus GTD, announced that online travel bookings made by its corporate customers through e-Travel (R)Aergo, the flexible, one-stop, online booking solution for managed travel programs, show a year-on-year increase of 91% globally.
Also reflecting e-Travel's strength within the corporate travel environment, and a growing industry trend towards online travel management, the company has seen a 200 percent increase in global requests for proposal's (RFP's) during the first half of 2004 vs 2003. With a high percentage of these RFP's coming from companies with a European presence, it is indicative of the increasing growth in online travel management being seen within Europe.
Ian Wheeler, Managing Director of e-Travel, said, "We are delighted with these latest figures that clearly illustrate the growth of online corporate travel management. Industry forecasts predict that Internet penetration will continue to grow to more than 50 percent in Western Europe and 80 percent in North America by 2006(1). With significant investment in research and development of new e-commerce solutions planned over the next five years, e-Travel intends to take advantage of increasing internet penetration to help drive the move to more corporations managing their travel online."
Existing investment in e-commerce has already helped consolidate e-Travel's position as the global leader in online travel solutions. Through continuous investment in technology, e-Travel provides solutions that benefit not only the traveler, but provide easy-to-use administrative tools which enable corporate travel managers to more easily manage the online booking process and integrate solutions into their back-office reporting systems.
An example of e-Travel's investment in e-commerce technology solutions for corporate travel are evident in the helpful wizards, the first of there kind within the travel industry, that guide administrators through the set-up process. Wizards enable even non-travel and technology expert administrators to configure a new Aergo site in a matter of minutes. Additionally, Aergo's unique dry-run functionality eliminates costly errors by allowing the testing of changes, new policies before they are passed on to the traveler.
"In response to our customers needs, we have designed an administration module that is both effective and intuitive," said Ian Wheeler. "By simplifying the administrative process, Wizards enable our clients to remain autonomous and make, test and apply changes in real-time. In today's dynamic marketplace where corporate travel policies can change quickly and sometimes on a daily basis, such reactivity is key. e-Travel Aergo enables our clients to react to the market and maintain control over their travel management program."
While investment in functional advances is key, e-Travel customers also benefit from continuous investment and advances in the technology found at e- Travel's data centre, which is the world's largest hosting operation dedicated to the travel industry. The e-Travel team has developed solutions which enhance the user experience including specialized hardware devices to "compress" pages before they are shipped to the users' browsers, greatly increasing the speed at which information is received. e-Travel also "decorates" its pages to let browsers know which piece is "dynamic" versus "static", which is useful when multiple users are at the same location. The corporation's technical infrastructure will understand the pages, and cache static content for all users enabling pages to be loaded more quickly saving users time.
By: N. Peter Kramer
