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Xetnric Case Study - TakeTraveller.com
Background
Traveller Services (HK) Ltd is a leading travel product consolidator based
in Hong Kong with annual sales in excess of HK$150 million. Traveller
Services (HK) Ltd. was formed in June 1985 and launched a B2C travel portal
traveller.com.hk in mid-1999. Traveller.com.hk won the UUNET/SCMP Best
Business Website Award in 1999 and IDG Web Marketing Merit Award in 2000.
Capitalizing the success of its web portal and offline business, Traveller
has planned to transform traveller.com.hk into a full-fledged distribution
and trading platform for travel-related products under a new name of taketraveller.com,
in order to reflect is global business strategy. Taketraveller.com will
be targeted at the Asia-Pacific market and employs a unique business model
- Travel Commerce Provider (TCP), connecting regional suppliers such as
hotels, travel agencies and tour operators directly to buyers worldwide.
The Traditional E-commerce Site
Traveller.com.hk initially emerged as a traditional B2C e-commerce site
in 1999. The company chose a solution built by Intisoft's W8 technology,
which features short time-to-market, fully secure and easy-to-use capabilities,
and allows the company to expand and upgrade its business models in the
future. Traveller.com.hk provides non-real-time transactions for its members
to make hotel reservation, car rental, air tickets and travel packages.
In this phase, traveller.com.hk has decided to focus on provide a trading
platform for end-consumers, build secure membership and online payment
authentication and encryption.
Business Challenge
As travel purchasing are getting more popular on the Internet, travel
companies are looking to differentiate their services from competitors.
Each business partner and suppliers like airlines, hotels and car rental
companies have different technical systems and business processes. Every
partner has its own pricing arrangement, ordering processes, terminology
and branding. Each separate business process would have to be programmed
and integrated separately. More programming would be required as more
business partners get signed up. Furthermore, it would be time consuming
and incredibly costly to make adjustment to itineraries and dynamic hotel
room rates. The new system must respond automatically and quickly to adapt
these changes from its business partners and suppliers.
Advancing Technology Through Xentric
Since the services provided by taketraveller.com will be consumed by and
connected to the information systems from thousands of hotel and tour
operators, tens of thousands of travel agencies around the world, and
a few dozens of web portals, it would require a set common business protocols.
XML is the most ideal answer to the question. Therefore, the new platform
should bear the following features and functionality:
- Native XML storage and compatible to Open Travel Alliance (OTA)'s XML schema.
- Ability to convert a variety of formats from different information source
- Version control and security features
- High availability and fail-over capabilities
- Flexibility and expandability
Traveller
has selected Xentric XML server from Intisoft to maintain their competitive
advantages and upgrade its information technology infrastructure. Xentric's
enhanced XML features allow their trading partners to be integrated in
less than one-third of the time required. The company can therefore focuses
on providing core business values and works closely with its business
partners to achieve key strategic improvements and enhancements to its
current travel management program and partner relationships.
The Solution
Traveller reviews that the benefits of Xentric, such as integrating data
from back-end systems and transforming information, databases and legacy
systems among business partners at minimal efforts, can reduce costs but
improve the quality and reliability of their services. The management
believes that their new trading platform can collaborate with all business
partners and extent their revenue stream.
TakeTraveller.com's
Travel Commerce Platform (TCP) is designed to meet the specific needs
of the next generation travel portals with flexibility, scalability and
advanced functionality. Traveller's partner web sites can offer their
own visitors travel reservations and information services via XML, and
without redirecting visitors to another site.
With Xentric,
taketraveller can provide unique and value-added services to its agents
and end-consumer. Moreover, they can aggregate services from many business
partners to maintain customer loyalty, reduce churn rate, and to increase
revenue.
The advantages
between Taketraveller.com and its business partners involved are :
- New revenue stream
- Gain higher sales and potential customer database
- Offer personalized services according to customer profile and distribution channel
- Provide more regional offerings to customers
- The affiliate
e-business and portal sites can easily expand their revenue base without
heavy investment in IT system and commitment on product management,
purchase or inventory.
- Traditional
travel agencies can obtain the most up-to-date information on product
availability and pricing, and search through a wide variety of product
supply and information through an extremely low cost communication channel.
- Suppliers
such as hotels, tour operators, airlines and car rental companies can
exploit a wider market channel while preserving strict control on pricing,
availability and product distribution. Through value added services,
each supplier can differentiate their products and services.
- Consumers
can have more choices and competitive pricing because of the indirect
but real-time interaction with thousands of vendors through their preferred
web site.
Click here
for more information about Intisoft's Xentric and services.
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Solution Overview :
- Travel Commerce Platform (TCP)
- A unique 4B1C travel trading platform
- Enhanced information distribution, improving suppliers, agents and web business
partners relationships and enabling a quicker response to seasonal trends
- Integration with legacy system
- XML-based Xentric solution enables ease of administration and streamlined development
cycles between business partners
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