Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Project
Project
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Table of Contents
1. INTRODUCTION: - 5
2. FACT FINDING: - 14
3. OBSERVATIONS: - 24
4. RECOMMENDATIONS:- 28
5. REFERENCES: 33
6. APPENDICES:- 36
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6.1 APPENDIX 1:-..............................................................................................................................36
6.2 APPENDIX 2:-..............................................................................................................................37
6.3 APPENDIX 3:-..............................................................................................................................38
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the following people who have contributed in different
ways towards the successful completion of my Project and I would not hesitate
to say that without their effective help and cooperation I would not have been
First of all I would like to thank Mr. Tony Olden who is my project supervisor
and finalize my topic and gave me effective tips about management of the
has been very helpful in collecting the required data and conducting the
And my special thanks to Mr. Haris Sajjad from Ababeel Travels who has been
kind enough to support me throughout the fact finding process and guided me
step by step towards the project. It is only because of his guidance and help
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1. Introduction: -
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1.1.2 Complications and problems of the Project:-
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travel agencies. Airlines will negotiate performance based
commissions with high volume travel agencies, but smaller
agencies are out of luck. They will have to offer value added
services such as specialized vocational packages to justify the
fees they will need to impose on customers.” [3]
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questionnaires are short so other people could give comfortable
time during the questionnaires or interviews. As we already have
noticed it was a great curiosity that why this business is rapidly
eliminating, what are the reasons of destruction of this business
which some time earlier used to be considered as a high
profitable business and why the agencies with very low running
budgets could not take stand so they could change their business
plans and mold their business with introducing other related stuff.
So action research has been decided to adopt.
-8-
requires pesticides that were developed and manufactured in another
country. The harvested coffee beans will themselves be transported
around the world to be processed and placed in packages which are
distributed to shops that then make the cup of coffee in a polystyrene
cup that was manufactured for the purpose but which then needs to be
disposed of and so on. Every choice we make relies on, and feeds, a
highly interdependent and far reaching way of life where some have
much and some have little.” [6]
In future e-ticketing can shape into more advanced shape and can be
seen in different successful ways, travel industry have got potential to
adopt latest technologies. They are working on advance shape of e-
ticketing which can replace the airport formalities into simple way of
proceedings. Customer would not need to take personal references as
they would have everything stored in their integrated circuit card (Smart
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Card) which would help buying tickets and further processes for their
journeys including their reward points.
Now a day after e-ticketing airlines are working for the multi segments
e-ticketing. E-ticketing can not be used on multi segments. For example:
If a passenger has to travel from New York to Cape Town but for some
reasons he/she has to stop in London, in this case passenger has to buy
two tickets if first airline is not operating on the destination required. It
is considerably a big problem for such customers. Passenger has to buy
first return ticket from New York to London and then second return
ticket from London to Cape Town. There can be delays in flights from
one segment which can disturb the entire route journey. “Standards
evolution continues to play a major role with airlines coming together at
the ATA/IATA Electronic Ticketing Working Group at least twice a year.
Here the airlines have begun to focus on the delivery of electronic
ticketing in the airport environment and especially as it impacts third
party ground-handling companies. Ground handling raises specific
operating issues that are not necessarily documented within the
resolutions. Furthermore it raises the issue of how multiple airlines can
effectively communicate electronic ticketing data and provides
consistent customer service.” [7]
Where IATA interacts with airlines it interacts with travel agents as well,
it performs a role of a middle man between travel agents and airlines.
Airlines deal only with their head offices, GSA and PSA and make direct
sales to the customer from these offices rest of the sales are being made
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from the travel agencies whether they are non IATA or IATA. Travel
agencies holding IATA license can issue tickets of different airlines but
there is still limitation for some agencies that they can only issue tickets
on few airlines, non IATA agencies can book tickets but they can not
issue tickets as they do not have IATA license and they can not purchase
ticket documents (Blank Ticket Paper). They queue their reservations to
airline or IATA license holding agency to issue tickets. “Development of
the Clearing House was followed by the establishment of Billing and
Settlement Plans and Cargo Accounts Settlement Systems in effect, one
way clearing houses to speed the flow of revenue from agents to
airlines. Sales Agents were given the opportunity to prove their
professional status under an accreditation process, and training - in
conjunction with the Universal Federation of Travel Agents' Associations
and the Federation of Freight Forwarders' Associations - was introduced.
The pattern for airline-agent relations was set with the introduction of
the Standard Agency Agreement in 1952. There are now nearly 81,000
IATA agents worldwide and 135,000 students have enrolled for IATA
sponsored agency training courses since they were introduced.” [8] IATA
has taken legal international counter measures after its rapid growth
and it can advise the airline industry on latest technologies and
aircrafts.
The need of such software was raised when travel industry was lacking
the global communication and for the development of travel industry it
was necessary to share all the information from one platform so all
airlines and travel agents could get benefit from it by utilizing TCP/IP
protocols. Galileo support a complete software package for the web
based travel agencies which operate their business only through
internet. “With 30 years of experience, they have the expertise those
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airlines, other travel suppliers, and travel agencies around the world
depend on. Maybe that’s why they are one of the world’s leading
providers of electronic global distribution services, connecting
approximately 44,000 travel agency locations to 470 airlines, 24 car
rental companies, 56,000 hotel properties, 430 tour operators and all
major cruise lines throughout the world.” [10] Headquartered in
Parsippany, New Jersey, USA, Galileo International has offices
worldwide. They also have a presence in 116 countries.
Galileo provide the system and support information to the travel agents
all over the word and it has one state of the art centralized system with
almost 100% of accurate performance. “Located in Greenwood Village,
near Denver, Colorado, the Data Center handles, on average, over 175
million requests for information per day. At peak times the company
processes more than 2,915 messages per second.” [11] Galileo is the
most commonly using software all over the word and has easier queries
if we compare it with other reservation systems, it provides even in-
house services where travel agents can take advantage of the system
and can improve their distribution system to their own customers.
“Galileo International also provides subscribers with information and
booking capabilities covering all the major hotel chains, car rental
companies, cruise lines and numerous tour operators throughout the
world.” [12]
Amadeus is the second largest air reservation system vastly used by the
travel agents after Galileo. It enables travel agents and travel service
providers to market and sell travel, to corporate and consumer;
Amadeus is being used by over 140 airlines all over the world and they
have a unique modular approach. Adopting the latest technology and
software Amadeus is growing rapidly in the travel industry, concerning
more on related products they have successfully launched and
implemented multiple services in travel industry “They base these
solutions on the intelligent application of new technology. The core of
there business is to serve many different companies - whether airlines,
travel agents, hotel operators or car rental firms. The rapid expansion of
this business has helped them establish a reputation as the fastest
growing and most widely used global distribution system (GDS).” [13]
Some travel agents think that Amadeus queries are easy understandable
rather than any other reservation systems; In fact all reservations
systems has almost common coding language but it differs at some
instants, somehow Amadeus have got quiet smaller queries than Galileo.
That makes Amadeus the second largest reservation system all over the
world to be used by travel agents and airlines, they provide broad
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services to their travel agency subscribers and there are numerous
Amadeus terminals connected with travel agencies.
Amadeus provide special services to their online travel agencies and take
the lead on other travel technology providers. Amadeus deals with other
products as well they provide service solutions for airlines, travel
agencies, car rental companies, cruise lines, hotels, tour operators,
railway companies and insurance companies. “There powerful software
tools manage sales processes and agency networks. There corporate
travel management solutions allow business travelers to book
arrangements from their desktop. Amadeus systems enable leading
travel providers to run their business efficiently and effectively,
Amadeus e-commerce solutions range from a simple connection to the
Amadeus System to the most sophisticated travel e-commerce platform
available.” [14] They enable airlines to use Amadeus system for
reservations at their city ticket offices as well as their airport ticket
offices.
Amadeus realized the need of time and they started collaborating with
other related organizations to give superior services to the customer and
gather huge revenue for the organization, this policy plays a major roll
in Amadeus rapid growth in recent years. They collaborated with Oracle
Corporation and introduced e-travel. “The e-Travel solutions integrate
all components of a managed travel programmed into a single Internet-
based service that enable travelers to book air, car, hotel and rail, all
within corporate guidelines.” [15] e-travel is completely owned by
Amadeus and they are providing better services in means of e-
commerce.
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2. Fact Finding: -
2.1 Justifications: -
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misunderstandings and give more opportunities to know the facts
better.
The first person interviewed was Director, Mr. Shahid Nawaz who
is the owner of Travel Connections. There is one director of the
company so interviewing him was the best option to use as a fact-
finding technique. The questions that were to be asked from him
were those, which required a detailed answer. Before proceeding
on with the project report, it was important to know as what he is
forecasting as how to expand the business after the e-ticketing
had been introduced and how e-ticketing influenced their
business. Did he feel that staying in business with after e-
ticketing was tough? As the project was to develop a report, so
wanted to see whether he had some knowledge of online systems
and what was his main aim behind coming into this field? A face-
to-face communication technique like interview seemed the most
appropriate approach to get the answers.
The fourth person interviewed was Mr. Haris Sajjad the marketing
manager of Ababeel travels. The marketing manager was just one,
so interviewing him seemed the most appropriate fact finding
technique. The questions to be asked were open ended questions
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like getting to know the current marketing strategies and whether
they were beneficial or not and what strategies they are planning
to make after the e-ticketing is getting popular in consumers.
The fifth person interviewed was Mr. Shah the Director of Zak
travels. There was one Director. All the complaints by the
customers and travel agents come to him and he solves them. So
he had vast information about the problems encountered by the
consumers. He was to provide us with detailed information so
interviewing him seemed the most appropriate option as a fact-
finding technique.
Customer: -
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most of the customers and some specific problems being
faced by few customers. So to get input from maximum
number of customers the questionnaire is simple.
Agents: -
2.2 Issues: -
Online air ticketing system is widely used now days but still there
are group of people who are not aware of the latest technologies
and trends. The ratio of these people is more in third word and
developing countries, travel agents have advantages in such
countries where people are not aware of such system. Knowledge
of online air ticketing system in developed countries is more than
remote parts of the word. In developed countries people are
willing to adopt latest technologies into their business to improve
its growth.
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reasons like sharing information over the internet, access to the
internet is another factor for the customers.
Travel agents are facing problems from the time e-ticketing was
introduced and airlines reduced their commissions for the travel
agents. Travel agencies if they are IATA license holder they work
with quiet big revenue and in return they are getting very low
profit. If investors invest such revenue in some other business
they can get better profit ratios, they plough their huge amount
as guarantee and they get equivalent or less credit compared to
their guarantee amount.
Agencies which are established for a long time they use their good
reputation to get more credit from the airlines and they have
more opportunities to grow their business to invest in developing
online air ticketing portals.
End of the month after clearing their credits agencies profits does
not meet the sufficient level so they can grow. Air line tickets are
quiet expensive and profit margins and very low if they sale a
ticket worth 500 pounds may be they are saving 5 pounds per
ticket due to competition and on other hand there is very low
commission from the airline.
Business strategies have been changing day by day and there are
no such strategy or business rules that can restrict travel agents
to normalize the prices. Where ever you go to buy a ticket the
prices are different and that’s what makes customers keen to find
out cheapest rate for their air travel tickets.
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Travel agencies situated in close distance to each other always
has competition due to walking clients, customer will buy the
ticket where ever he/she would find discount of even single
pound. No matter what the services are? Some customers visit
plenty of shops to get quotes before they buy their tickets. So the
cheapest quote they get they buy.
Airline policies are the major issue for the travel industry
specifically for small scale travel agents or non IATA travel agents.
Since airlines have adopted e-ticketing they started reducing
commission for travel agents straight away and give more benefit
to the customer so they can take full advantage of the market
selling cheap tickets directly to the customers.
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competition. Airline policies worked for their own benefits but
they let travel agents all alone in business to strive.
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2.3 Surveys: -
Due to contacts agency staff were agree to give some time for the
agents’ survey but only when they shall have free time, So altogether
ten travel agents were asked objective questionnaire and it was quiet
easy for them because they just had to choose their answer from the
given options.
The big part of the survey was customer survey and it was quiet difficult
to gather information from the customers as nobody had time to speak
especially if they are being stopped on road without any reason or
anything. Decision was taken to speak with the customers’ coming to the
travel agencies and waiting for their turn to be served. Permission had to
be taken from the agency management if survey could be done from
their customers who shall be sitting and waiting for their turn to be
served. Permission was granted from two travel agencies and the third
agency did not let it to be done, due to their company policy or may be
some other reasons were involved. Survey was quiet easy to be answered
because of objective questions and it hardly took 15 to 20 minutes for
each customer.
Questionnaire for the customers and agents was different and its motive
was to get comments and reviews between agents and customers and
customer and agents’ knowledge to e-commerce and e-ticketing.
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2.3.1 Customers Survey: -
70% people had credit cards, 95% wished to purchase items form
internet, 65% feel secure buying on internet, credit card fraud is
the most common fraud on the internet and it is quiet active in
the travel industry so most people do not like to buy their tickets
online or some times even trough travel agents they prefer to buy
cash tickets rather then paying them buy credit or debit cards.
80% travel often through airlines, 40% once a year, 30% Several
times a year, 20% once a month and 10% very often. Changing
strategies does not affect only travel agents it affect also to the
customers, Changes in fares has been reported after every month
and customer is the only one who is paying everything at the end.
Rapidly fluctuated fuel prices effects on rents and in last four
months fuel surcharge has been raised more then 100%.
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2.3.2 Travel Agents Survey: -
Travel agents did not have different views but familiar with the
customers and they think the things they are doing they can not
serve well than that. All travel agents were qualified and
computer literate and some learned more with experience. 95% of
the agents had training of the system they were using. Only 10%
believe that their reservation system is user friendly. 80% find
difficult to deal more than one customer at a time, for example if
they are dealing with a customer and meanwhile they have to
answer a call they get confused and they can not give proper
intention to any of the customers.
30% are able to manage their time with the customers. 80% are
facing problem using the reservation system it shows how they
can serve a customer at their best if they are having problem
their own system. 90% agents recommend their customers to buy
their tickets, 80% of agents are quiet happy to work in this
business and their earnings.
45% agents work 10 hours a day and they told they do not feel
satisfied when they go home they feel like they are taking their
work with them at home, as we know is a quiet huge work load
job, 80% think their job is too tiring due to customer load.
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3. Observations: -
Three travel agencies were visited to get the facts. First agency was
Travel Connections second was Ababeel Travels and last was Zak Travels.
Time was spent in agencies and in the waiting list queue. The employees
were sitting on their seats and started doing there previous days
remaining work and start checking the booking and reservation of the
day before. It was checked out through the system that whether the
seats were confirmed or not.
There were few customers in the morning time and travel agents were
relaxed. They were not over burdened. There are mostly phone calls in
the morning, and mostly calls are for the general information about the
different airlines and different countries, due to the general information
calls the phone are quite busy and the agents become annoyed before
the peak time. There were few customers that were interested in
booking/reservation. Then at around 11 am the customer starts coming
and all the counters of the booking started getting occupied. Then very
soon there was no space for more customers on the counter and waiting
list queue started filling.
There was a lot of workload on the travel agents. They were right about
telling me that it becomes difficult to handle customers in times of peak
load. Some customers left, as they didn’t want to wait. Others, who
could wait, waited for there turns.
Usually, the customer told the source and destination of where he wants
to travel and the date of travel. The travel agent entered the codes of
the particular source and destination. Now, here some of the travel
agents were facing problems. Some experienced travel agents who were
working in the agency for a long time, had the codes on their fingertips,
but the majority had to look up on the user manual of the software and
then they enter the codes. For some customers who were in a hurry, felt
annoyed while it was okay with some others. The codes for cities like
London, New York; Paris etc were easily remembered by most of the
travel agents. But such locations which were not frequently visited by
the majority of the customer like Cyprus, Bulgaria, Maldives Island etc.
even those employees couldn’t remember who were working for a long
time in the organization.
If the required seat was available with the required number of seats,
then it was displayed on the screen of the agent and told to customer.
For those customers, who were interested in booking seats told the
travel agent to book there seats. If the numbers of seats are
unavailable, then a travel agent tells the customer about the
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unavailability of the seats and asks if he wishes to travel in other airlines
or on other dates. Those who just wanted to collect information didn’t
book the seats but instead either went away or if they were calling, put
the phone down. This really annoyed the travel agents because there
time is very precious in times of peak load and those clients who do not
reserve seats and just collect information cause delay to those
customers who are in a hurry and want to reserve seats. There was a
new agent who had been hired a few days back. It took him the most
time to handle customers. As he was new, and was in the process of
training of the current situation, so he was facing difficulties in
providing the customers the maximum comforts to the customer. There
was a lunch break from 1 to 2 pm due to this the customer have to wait,
this is the problem of unavailability.
After seat availability, the customers asked for the price. The prices
were read from a manual. Again those agents who had dealt with similar
flights, know the prices on the spot but some had to look in up in the
manual which caused delay as well. Then, it was noticed that a travel
agent was quoting the price to a customer for a flight and another
customer a different price for the same flight of the same airline. For
regular customer, the price was reasonable and according to the pricing
schedule but for other customers it wasn’t. Then customer insisted on
getting pricing information of the flight of some other airline. After
getting information from several flights, then they asked the travel
agent to book the seats.
The travel agent asked for the name of passenger, phone number,
reference person name, and passport information. The seat was booked
with the passenger record details asked above. A temporary id which is
known as PNR (passenger name record) was generated for each record
and told to the customer. When the customer will pay against the PNR
number, customer has to pay the fare of the flight at the cashier
counter. Customer comes to the casher counter and tells his PNR number
to the casher then casher checks the status of the seat and the price,
and receives the payment of the ticket and gives receipt to the customer
after verifying all the details. The cashier has a file. At the end of the
day all the payments are recorded on a file with the receipts. There is a
person in charge who is responsible to match the payments recorded on
register with the receipts. Then customer comes to the customer
services table and shows the receipt of the payment and from there the
tickets are printed and handed over to the customer after verifying of
the payment. Even if customer booked the seat through phone, he had
to come to the office, to pay the fare of the flight and to collect the
ticket.
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Then a customer came over who had purchased the ticket but for some
reason couldn’t board the flight. He wanted to refund the ticket. In this
case there are different policies of international flights and for domestic
flights. For domestic flights if the customer comes before 48 hours of the
departure of the flight then the 10% will be deducted and the remaining
payment will be given back to the customer. If the customer comes
before 8 hours or after the flight had departure then the travel agent
deducts 50% and gives the remaining payment to the customer. For the
international flights if the customer didn’t travel then there is two
options for the customer, he can get his payment back and only ticket
price will be deducted. Or can get the ticket of some other dates.
The customer came up with the problem that the travel agent has
written the wrong departure time and due to that the customer was
unable to reach his destination on time. He was asking for the full
refund of his ticket. This was the human error but nobody was admitting
it.
There was another customer coming with the problem. She had reserved
her seat over the phone. The spelling of her name was misspelled. She
was not allowed to board her flight as the spellings of her name on her
passport and on the ticket was different. She had come over to refund
her money of the ticket. Now nobody knows who had booked her seat,
all the travel agents were quiet. As she complained to the higher
authorities, so quick action was taken to resolve the matter, her money
was refunded. She was very angry, as she had to go to her destination
urgently.
It was analyzed that customers faced problem related to the time factor
and customer were not provided with sufficient information as there are
lots of customer and the customer care officers were less to provide
facilities and divide their time to each customer.
The agents become very tired due to over work so they are unable to
give full attention to the customer who came after 3 pm.
In this situation customer would prefer to get their tickets direct from
the airlines with their mental satisfaction that they are paying direct to
the airline and if there would be any error, so the airline itself would be
responsible as airlines has big network of organization and they gather
big revenue because they save the commissions which they use to give to
travel agencies.
Travel agencies get less commission from the airlines either they sale it
through their own online system or they sale it to customer on agencies
because airlines have launched their or platform for customers.
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Customers always prefer to get better services whether they pay little
bit more but in this case they always have satisfaction that they bought
their tickets from the airline or direct from their authorized agents.
Travel agencies sale tickets at a little bit less price as they compensate
the customers with some percentage of the commission which they get
from the airline. It is a very reasonable way to stay in their business but
most of the agents think that e-ticketing and direct purchasing from the
internet have made a very big impact on their businesses and the profit
margins has been dropped more than 60%. Travel agents are still trying
to survive by introducing new strategies to their organizations depending
on the airline policies towards them.
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4. Recommendations:-
Non IATA travel agents have rights to reserve and book tickets but they
can not issue the tickets as they do not have guarantee to IATA, these
agencies book tickets for the customers and then they forward booking
reference number on a queue to the IATA identified agencies. These
agencies get commissions from the IATA agencies with very low profit
rate. That’s why non IATA travel agencies always have high fares for the
customers.
Travel Agencies working with B2B customers they work on credit and
mostly B2B customers clear their funds at the end of every month, if
their credit goes higher it disturbs the cash flow of the agency as they
pay twice in a month to airlines. B2B customers get even special
discount from the travel agencies as compared with regular consumers.
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4.2 Latest Technologies and Survival:-
Travel industry is know as the trend setter industry, they were first to
bring in computers in travel industry and they enhanced their businesses
introducing computers working for their airline reservation systems.
“The adoption of information technology (IT) in organizations has been
growing at a rapid pace. The use of the technology has evolved from the
automation of structured processes to systems that are truly
revolutionary in that they introduce change into fundamental business
procedures. Indeed, it is believed that "More than being helped by
computers, companies will live by them, shaping strategy to fit new
information technology” [17]
Travel agents should understand the need of the time and they should
adopt the latest trends to survive in this filed. IATA agencies should
introduce their own online portals for customers connected with their
IATA identification, this way they can improve their business rapidly and
they can introduce holiday packages as well. “Each day users always get
plenty of spam mails for advertising purposes. These are not only
increase lot of traffics on the Internet but also create some irritations to
email receivers. Further there are the mountains of informative web
sites providing tremendous information for users. The existing search
engines do not allow users to find the relevant information easily.” [18]
Once they built up their own online reservation systems with the passage
of time and with the help of advanced marketing techniques they can
bring their portal on the top of search engines. As we know Google is the
word’s largest search engine, if somebody has to find anything he/she
will just go to Google and will look for the required web page to book
their tickets in addition their searching words can have different results.
Advertisement on different related website can help as well.
Travel agencies with small business can improve their business with
introducing holiday packages in their services, it has got a huge potential
they need to adopt new marketing strategies so they can get more
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business, if their business is not getting enough profit from walking
clients, they can advertise their holiday packages business and can
operate from back office they do not need to stay on high streets to pay
more rent and expenditures they can hire a small office with less rent as
holiday packages are mostly operated by phone.
They can develop their web portal for holiday packages as they would
not be able to issue tickets by themselves, customers who buy holiday
packages they know they would not get their tickets hotel bookings and
other conformation at once they have to book it in advance and after
couple of days they get all tickets and confirmations. This is the only
way for small non IATA travel agencies to raise their profits within this
industry.
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do not want to disclose their credit card details on internet they do not
feel secure, some like to try different routes or multi segments which
online reservation system does not offer. These could be the reasons for
some people to come back to travel agents.
Today people like to buy even their groceries sitting back home and save
their time and organizations are introducing new ways for shopping day
by day. That day is not far when people would have approach to buy
everything online as we can drive this conclusion from seeing last few
years’ e-commerce development.
Travel agents can take full advantage of the new system as they will be
dealing only one customer at a time and they can concentrate on their
work. “It is therefore important to consider the future relationship
between software and society, even to the extent of considering
whether future development processes could become socially driven,
rather than technically driven. This relatively radical view of the future
of software seeks to bridge the gap between technology and society.”
[23] There shall be no credit involved as booking reference number will
be issued after the payment will be processed successfully. There would
be less staff for the management, less expenditure, less office rent as
compared to the high street rent, and all these small things would
contribute to get more profit.
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4.4.1 Complications:-
Many travel agents have already taken their business online and
they are making good business but some customers still have
problems using their online systems. The agents are specially
trained to use a reservation system to obtain information and
interpret it for the customer. Such information includes the base
fare, taxes, travel and refund limitations, aircraft type and meals
and entertainment provided. Sometimes this information is
obscured in the display from a travel site in frequent Web pages
and irrelevant text. Other times the information is not provided
at all. “These guidelines describe how to display a picture of a
product, how to describe the product, and how to display the
price to the shopper. These guidelines fail to address how to
design a Web site when the product is either a service or uses a
variable pricing scheme involving many constraints and options,
such as a Web site that provides airline flight and fare
information. As a result, travel web sites have significant usability
problems.” [25] But complications are not that much bad as they
were in real time sales when a customer has got problem with
different name in booking or misguidance, In this case customer is
100% responsible for giving wrong or false information about
booking.
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5. References:
[1] Montano R., Dillon R., 2005, ‘The Impact of Technology on Relationships
within Organizations’, ‘Information Technology and Management’, Volume 6 ,
Issue 2-3, pp. 227-251.
[4] Avison D., Lau F., 1999, ‘Action Research’, ‘To make academic research
relevant, researchers should try out their theories with practitioners in real
situations and real organizations.’, ‘Communications of the ACM’ Vol. 42, No.
1, PP. 94-97
[5] Lau F., Lee A., 1997, ‘A Review of action research in information systems
studies’ ‘Information Systems and Qualitative Research’, ‘Chapman & Hall,
U.K.’, pp. 31–68
[6] Lane A.,’ What Is Technology?’,’ The world around us’, Available At:
http://www.open2.net/sciencetechnologynature/worldaroundus/whatistechnol
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[8] IATA, 2005, ‘50 years of IATA history in hard copy’ Available At:
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6. Appendices:-
History of Galileo:-
Vision of Galileo:-
Technology: -
Key Facts:-
Galileo International:-
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2,000 employees
65 sales offices
Travel Suppliers:-
Travel Subscribers:-
6 continents
44,000 locations
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• add value to customer site
• expand customer product or service offer
• increase customer retention
• help you acquire new customers with more buying
power
Interviews Questionnaire: -
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Azhar: If the output is profitable then it wouldn’t matter whether
to get that profitability the expenses have increased
because the company has to stay in competition. What are
your comments?
Azhar: How do you think you can gain more profit?
Azhar: Is their any problem facing in the situation related to cash
flow?
Azhar: Is there any problem related to the monthly balance sheet?
Azhar: Will online system increase your profitability?
Azhar: How is your marketing department set up?
Azhar: what is your company marketing policy?
Azhar: How do you carry out your marketing activities?
Azhar: Does it cost you much for advertising?
Azhar: Are you satisfied with the current tools for advertising?
Azhar: How do you perceive as a solution to introduce another
strategy for marketing?
Azhar: Do you use Internet as a means of marketing currently?
Azhar: Do you know that the agency is going to take the system
online?
Azhar: What are your comments?
Azhar: If the system goes online, do you feel that your workload
will be reduced?
Azhar: Do you think the current market shall increase?
Azhar: Do you have any idea of online marketing?
Azhar: What are the main problems faced by this organization?
Azhar: Are you planning to expand your business by bringing it
online?
Azhar: Do you know about the Internet business and about its
growth? Are you comfortable with it?
Azhar: How many employees you have hired for your agency?
Azhar: Do you want to hire more employees to deal with
customers?
Azhar: What is your strategy for your organization if airlines drop
down your commissions?
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