Key Market Issues

Travel management companies (TMCs) face fierce competition from a number of channels. The entrance of online agencies into the corporate market has put pressure on service fees. Many of these online agencies are actually owned by the GDSs, thus creating obvious channel conflict. The TMCs need to provide corporate customers with complete inventory content while maintaining peak-level efficiency at their call centers. Most progressive TMCs have also recognized the value of automating the reservation process by having their corporate clients use self-booking technology. Implementing a GDS-independent platform is essential to compete in this new evolving market.

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The Farelogix FLX™ Platform provides the Essential Bridging Technology (EBT^SM) for TMCs to compete in this new multi-source reality. Despite efforts by the major carriers to shift to lower cost platforms, the near term reality will be a hybrid of low cost and more traditional GDS-based inventory for corporate travel fulfillment.

The TMC must be able to seamlessly integrate legacy and new sources of inventory to provide total content to corporate customers. In addition, as Internet distribution continues to grow, TMCs must integrate Web content and low-cost carriers (LCCs) into the sales process to ensure that their agents have the same access to fares and inventory as their corporate customers.

Farelogix provides a proven platform for multi-GDS, supplier direct, and Web content that can be easily integrated into current agency operations. The FLX™ Platform also provides unique patent-pending distribution technology that allows the TMC to direct the sourcing of specific itinerary segments. This new technology allows the TMC to take control over how products are sourced and distributed, providing unprecedented leverage with preferred suppliers.

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Farelogix can provide a certified third-party travel agent point-of-sale (POS) application to integrate these diverse inventory sources into a common platform, or it can work with an existing agency’s POS interface. The FLX™ Platform can also connect directly into third-party corporate self-booking tools to provide the multi-source access directly to the corporate traveler. The FLX™ Virtual Fare Store (VFS™) calculates the lowest fare from these multiple sources, ensuring that corporate clients receive not only their negotiated discounts, but also the lowest applicable fare for their travel itineraries.

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