There many companies vying to be that new "Reservation System", "Point of Sales Tool", "Desktop", "Travel Merchandizing System" or whatever name one choose. Their concept is to be the one place or "front end" that connects to a variety of places that agents wish to shop and book.

Why the migration? When an America West airline pays 5% commission for a Web-based reservation, and 0% for a reservation booked through a traditional CRS, agents have incentive to use a source other than a CRS.

MARK Travel with their VAX product provided various incentive and integration options for agents and went from 12% to over 65% Web-based reservations in just the last year! And, MARK Travel saves 6 phone calls per reservation due to the information available via their Website as compared to information available in a CRS or via the telephone.

Truly, suppliers are providing plenty of incentive for this migration from the traditional CRS (where everything was created and processed in the CRS) to a new environment.

Whether or not the migration leads to one "next generation GDS" that provides a common front end and shopping system that connects to many "content" or booking places, is yet to be determined. Agents may end up using a combination of sites and places for bookings. Personally, I feel that with the supplier incentives in place, we will migrate to a hybrid where agents use a few booking or reservation tools ? perhaps a cruise, primary tour, a specialty tour, air, and a couple of backups. Only time will tell where the migration really leads.

One part I am totally sure of, is each of these booking engines will integrate or "Live Connect" to the reservation card in ClientBase so that agents can quickly and easily process (print itineraries, invoice, link to the Back Office, report on, etc.) the reservation regardless of where it was made.

Thanks for reading. Thanks for working with us and being our client. And thanks for working with us on technology solutions for the future.

Lee