Chapter 5: MIS APPLICATIONS IN TRAVEL AND TOURISM INDUSTRY

Learning objectives:
After studying this section, you will be able to:
Explain what composes the travel industry;
Enumerate and explain the advantages of Amadeus MIS;
Differentiate CRS from GDS; and
Explain the functionalities of CRS and GDS.

Introduction:
The use of MIS in travel and tourism industry is very significant. As the industry is a big and is challenging,
serving to all types of passengers and travelers will be difficult to manage without the right system that will help the
organizations provide the convenience they deserve. Airlines success, for instance, depends largely on its ability to
intelligently manage sales, marketing and other business processes as well as its customer databases; this chapter will
introduces some systems as used in the industry.

The Travel Industry

The travel industry is composed of those establishments responsible for transporting people from one place to
another based on their desired destinations such as the following:
1. Airline companies
2. Shipping lines
3. Bus lines
4. Travel agencies / Tour operators
(insert picture page 74)

Below lists some of the airlines operating in the Philippines:

1. Philippines Airlines
2. Cebu Pacific
3. Air Asia Zest
4. Tigerair Philippines
5. See Air International
6. Spirit Of Manila Airlines
Below are the different expectations forms the clients of the travel industry:
1. Schedules of flight
2. Prices of tickets
3. Comfort of seats
4. Quality of meals
5. Treatment by the crew members and ground staff
6. Airport facilities
7. Assistance in travel arrangements
8. Assistance in arranging hotel accommodation
9. Assisting in customers problems immediately in the airport front office
10. Safe travel
11. Safe aircraft
12. Not delayed flights
13. Immediate response to their needs
Below are show figures of some typical reservation procedures for an airline service:

The second representation provides convenience to the customers as they will no longer need to wait and fall in
a long line just to avail a specific airline service. Website is an important facility that is commonly used by travel agencies
as this ensures sales. As travelers nowadays do not want hassles, this helps in providing easy access to their services.
More and more systems are being implemented by different companies to be able to provide the necessary
services to their clients to maximize their return of investment. For airlines and travel agencies using the Amadeus
Global Distribution System, this technology also offers convenience as will be discussed in this chapter.

The Amadeus Management Informations System

For managers needing relevant information to make informed decisions about the business, this is a
powerful business intelligence tool to them. Not only the managers but also those corporate customers and
every day users from which they will make from their Amadeus Agency Manager mid office. This pertains to a
repository of operational data which was gathered from he Agency Manager and allows the users to present or
analyze them to make business decisions. With the MIS interface, travel agencies can offer their corporate
customers an access to their personal data which then provides them with instantly updateable reports.
With this MIS, it provides the following advantages:

1. On customer service flexibility

a) It provides better customer service as it allows the user to have a list of standard reports or
create their own standard.
b) The reports from that system are built fast which can be sent vial email in PDF format.
c) It also allows corporate customers to access their data if they need it for reporting purposes.

2. On data security
a) It offers high security of data as it is hosted in a secure environment at the Amadeus Data
Center

3. On accessibility
a) It is accessible via the Internet which then allows easy deployment of the solution not only to
the internal user but to the corporate customers as well.
b) More importantly, it is available to everybody anytime, anywhere to retrieve the information
and reports they need.
Central Reservation System Vs. Global Distribution System
In this world of travel, addressing the needs of various clients is challenging. Airline companies need to store a
lot of informations such as routes, schedules, fares, and reservations where these clients depend form. Can we imagine
how an airline stored, distributed, and accessed informations before the innovation of all aspects of its operations was
introduces in this generation?

1. Central Reservation System

A Central Reservation System or commonly known as CRS is a computer based reservation system in the
travel and tourism industry used to store and retrieve information and eventually conduct transaction
related to travel. It was originally designed and used by airline but was then extended to travel agents and
travelers. It has the following functions:
a. It provides informations on schedule this function is important for the clients to know the days and
times for flights operated by a particular airline.
b. It provides information on availability this separates an airlines service class as available for
passengers whether economy, business, or first class.
c. It provides information on fare quotes this information pertains to what consolidated fare for a
particular itinerary that a passenger gas a chosen which is based on flight, day time, service class or type,
and passenger type
d. It provides information on reservation information such as seat bookings or the confirmed service a
particular passenger has availed.
e. It provides information on ticketing this function pertains so that capability of the system to generate
and store tickets for passengers.
f. It provides information on refunds and cancellations the system allows for refund should the
confirmed passenger decides to cancel a booking due to some personal reasons provided it conforms to
an airlines cancellation and refund policy.
 Based on the illustration above, the travel agent to provide services to prospective passengers need to have
individual connections to airline companies. For instance, a travel agent to book for a customer for ABC Airlines need to
have a connection to airlines CRS. If another customer need to book to CDE Airlines, the agent need to have a
connection to that airlines are using different mainframe systems, the travel agent needs to use both systems, thus,
needs to be trained on different mainframe clients. The CRS also is unable to perform direct searches across airline
systems, thus, difficult for the travel agent. Another is that, inventory will be tedious because inventory searches and
reservations had to be done through individual airline CRSs separately.

2. Global distributions System

A Global Distribution System or commonly known as GDS is another computer based reservation system in
the travel and tourism industry. It is a network of providers bringing the products and services together which are
geographically spread across the work to the doorstep to the consumers anywhere worldwide. Its system
architectures are largely based on a mainframe TPF or Transaction Processing Facility. Below are the four major
global distributions System.

a. SABRE (Semi Automatic Business Reservation Environment) this was created by American airlines.
b. Amadeus this was created through the efforts of four airlines, the Air France, Iberia, Lufthansa, and
SAS.
c. Galileo this was created formed by collaborative efforts of a group of European Airlines.
d. Worldspan this was formed by Delta Airlines, Northwest Airlines, and Trans World Airlines in early
1990.
The GDS offers the following advantages:
a. It provides simplified access to users This function is important for the users as access to possibly all
airlines on the world is simplified via a single interface.
b. It connects to multiple airlines the system is able to connect to various airlines via modern PC based
clients or even through legacy mainframe clients.
c. It needs less maintenance the system need not to be maintained most of the time thus offers less up
keep overhead.
d. It offers flexibility the system is able to combine airline inventories without being tedious to the part
of a travel agent.
 Based from the illustration, we can say that the advent GDS helped the life of travel agents easier. Not
only that, travel agencies and operators also benefitted from its features.