Computer reservation system

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Computer reservation systems, or central reservation systems (CRS), are computerized systems used to store and retrieve information and conduct transactions related to air travel, hotels, car rental, or other activities. Originally designed and operated by airlines, CRSs were later extended for use by travel agencies, and global distribution systems (GDSs) to book and sell tickets for multiple airlines. Most airlines have outsourced their CRSs to GDS companies, [1] which also enable consumer access through Internet gateways.

Contents

Modern GDSs typically also allow users to book hotel rooms, rental cars, airline tickets as well as other activities and tours. They also provide access to railway reservations and bus reservations in some markets, although these are not always integrated with the main system. These are also used to relay computerized information for users in the hotel industry, making reservation and ensuring that the hotel is not overbooked.

Airline reservations systems may be integrated into a larger passenger service system, which also includes an airline inventory system and a departure control system. The current centralised reservation systems are vulnerable to network-wide system disruptions. [2] [3] [4] [5]

History

Preserved mainframe computer unit of the MARS-1 at the JR East Railway Museum in Saitama, September 2015. MARS1(1).jpg
Preserved mainframe computer unit of the MARS-1 at the JR East Railway Museum in Saitama, September 2015.

MARS-1

The MARS-1 train ticket reservation system was designed and planned in the 1950s by the Japanese National Railways' R&D Institute, now the Railway Technical Research Institute, with the system eventually being produced by Hitachi in 1958. [6] It was the world's first seat reservation system for trains. [7] The MARS-1 was capable of reserving seat positions, and was controlled by a transistor computer with a central processing unit and a 400,000-bit magnetic drum memory unit to hold seating files. It used many registers, to indicate whether seats in a train were vacant or reserved to accelerate searches of and updates to seat patterns, for communications with terminals, printing reservation notices, and CRT displays. [6]

Remote access

In 1953 Trans-Canada Airlines (TCA) started investigating a computer-based system with remote terminals, testing one design on the University of Toronto's Ferranti Mark 1 machine that summer. Though successful, the researchers found that input and output was a major problem. Ferranti Canada became involved in the project and suggested a new system using punched cards and a transistorized computer in place of the unreliable tube-based Mark I. The resulting system, ReserVec, started operation in 1962, and took over all booking operations in January 1963. Terminals were placed in all of TCA's ticketing offices, allowing all queries and bookings to complete in about one second with no remote operators needed.

In 1953 American Airlines CEO C. R. Smith chanced to sit next to R. Blair Smith, a senior IBM sales representative, on a flight from Los Angeles to New York. C.R. invited Blair to visit their Reservisor system and look for ways that IBM could improve the system. Blair alerted Thomas Watson Jr. that American was interested in a major collaboration, and a series of low-level studies started. Their idea of an automated airline reservation system (ARS) resulted in a 1959 venture known as the Semi-Automatic Business Research Environment (SABRE), launched the following year. [8] By the time the network was completed in December 1964, it was the largest civil data processing system in the world.

Other airlines established their own systems. Pan Am launched its PANAMAC system in 1964. Delta Air Lines launched the Delta Automated Travel Account System (DATAS) in 1968. United Airlines and Trans World Airlines followed in 1971 with the Apollo Reservation System and Programmed Airline Reservation System (PARS), respectively. Soon, travel agents began pushing for a system that could automate their side of the process by accessing the various ARSes directly to make reservations. Fearful this would place too much power in the hands of agents, American Airlines executive Robert Crandall proposed creating an industry-wide computer reservation system to be a central clearing house for U.S. travel; other airlines demurred, citing fear that United States antitrust law may have been breached.

Travel agent access

In 1976, United Airlines began offering its Apollo system to travel agents; while it would not allow the agents to book tickets on United's competitors, the marketing value of the convenient terminal proved indispensable. SABRE, PARS, and DATAS were soon released to travel agents as well. Following airline deregulation in 1978, an efficient CRS proved particularly important; by some counts, Texas Air executive Frank Lorenzo purchased money-losing Eastern Air Lines specifically to gain control of its SystemOne CRS.

Also in 1976 Videcom international with British Airways, British Caledonian and CCL launched Travicom, the world's first multi-access reservations system (wholly based on Videcom technology), forming a network providing distribution for initially two and subsequently 49 subscribing international airlines (including British Airways, British Caledonian, Trans World Airlines, Pan Am, Qantas, Singapore Airlines, Air France, Lufthansa, Scandinavian Airlines System, Air Canada, KLM, Alitalia, Cathay Pacific and Japan Airlines) to thousands of travel agents in the UK. It allowed agents and airlines to communicate via a common distribution language and network, handling 97% of UK airline business trade bookings by 1987. The system went on to be replicated by Videcom in other areas of the world including the Middle East (DMARS), New Zealand, Kuwait (KMARS), Ireland, Caribbean, United States and Hong Kong. Travicom was a trading name for Travel Automation Services Ltd. When British Airways (who by then owned 100% of Travel Automation Services Ltd) chose to participate in the development of the Galileo system Travicom changed its trading name to Galileo UK and a migration process was put in place to move agencies from Travicom to Galileo.

European airlines also began to invest in the field in the 1980s initially by deploying their own reservation systems in their homeland, propelled by growth in demand for travel as well as technological advances which allowed GDSes to offer ever-increasing services and searching power. In 1987, a consortium led by Air France and West Germany's Lufthansa developed Amadeus, modeled on SystemOne. Amadeus Global Travel Distribution was launched in 1992. In 1990, Delta, Northwest Airlines, and Trans World Airlines formed Worldspan, and in 1993, another consortium (including British Airways, KLM, and United Airlines, among others) formed the competing company Galileo GDS based on Apollo. Numerous smaller companies such as KIU have also formed, aimed at niche markets not catered for by the four largest networks, including the low-cost carrier segment, and small and medium size domestic and regional airlines.

For many years, global distribution systems (GDSs) have had a dominant position in the travel industry. To bypass the GDSs, and avoid high GDS fees, airlines have started to sell flights directly through their websites. [9] Another way to bypass the GDSs is direct connection to travel agencies, such as that of American Airlines. [10]

Major airline CRS systems

NameCreated byAirlines usingAlso used by
AirCore
  • GDS and other PSS systems, Low Cost Airlines, Full Services Carriers, Hybrid Airlines
  • Several large corporations
Abacus (purchased by Sabre in 2015)
  • Online travel agencies
  • Over 450 individual airlines
  • Over 25 countries in Asia Pacific
  • Over 80,000 hotels

ACCELaero

  • ISA, Information Systems Associates FZE
Amadeus (1987)
  • 144 Airline Passenger Service System customers through 60,000 airline sales offices worldwide
  • 90,000 travel agencies worldwide, both offline and online, in 195 countries. Online agencies include:
  • 440 bookable airlines (including over 60 Low Cost Carriers)
  • Over 100,000 unique hotel properties
  • 30 Car rental companies representing over 36,000 car rental locations
  • 21 Cruise Lines
  • 203 Tour Operators
  • 103 Rail Operators
  • 23 Travel Insurance Companies
ameliaRES
  • InteliSys Aviation Systems
Avantik PSS
  • Bravo Passenger Solutions
Axess
Deltamatic (PSS)
Crane
Internet Booking Engine
  • Over 3 individual airlines
KIU
  • Over 20 individual airlines
  • Over 10 countries in Latin America, North America, Africa and Europe
  • Travel agencies and wholesale tour operators worldwide
MARS
Mercator
Navitaire
PARS/SHARES by EDS
Patheo
Radixx
Sabre (1960)
  • Online Travel Agencies:
  • Schedules for 400 airlines
  • 380 airline industry customers, including 44 airlines representing all major alliances
  • 88,000 hotels
  • 50 rail carriers
  • 180 tour operators
  • 13 cruise lines
  • 24 car rental brands serving 30,000 locations
  • 9 limousine vendors providing access to more than 33,500 ground service providers
  • 55,000 travel agencies in over 100 countries
Sell-More-Seats
SkyVantage Airline Software
Travel Technology Interactive
  • Travel agencies and wholesale tour operators worldwide
TravelSky
Travelport GDS Includes Apollo (1971), Galileo (1987) and Worldspan (1990)

Other systems

See also

Related Research Articles

Sabre Global Distribution System, owned by Sabre Corporation, is a travel reservation system used by travel agents and companies to search, price, book, and ticket travel services provided by airlines, hotels, car rental companies, rail providers and tour operators. Originally developed by American Airlines under CEO C.R. Smith with the assistance of IBM in 1960, the booking service became available for use by external travel agents in 1976 and became independent of the airline in March 2000.

Sabre Corporation, a travel technology company headquartered in Southlake, Texas, is the largest global distribution systems (GDS) provider for air bookings. The company's primary product, the Sabre Global Distribution System, and others like it, act as neutral intermediaries, connecting travel suppliers like airlines and hotels with travel sellers like agencies. They offer real-time availability and pricing, making them important for corporate travel management.

A passenger name record (PNR) is a record in the database of a computer reservation system (CRS) that contains the itinerary for a passenger or a group of passengers travelling together. The concept of a PNR was first introduced by airlines that needed to exchange reservation information in case passengers required flights of multiple airlines to reach their destination ("interlining"). For this purpose, IATA and ATA have defined standards for interline messaging of PNR and other data through the "ATA/IATA Reservations Interline Message Procedures - Passenger" (AIRIMP). There is no general industry standard for the layout and content of a PNR. In practice, each CRS or hosting system has its own proprietary standards, although common industry needs, including the need to map PNR data easily to AIRIMP messages, has resulted in many general similarities in data content and format between all of the major systems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ReserVec</span>

ReserVec was a computerized reservation system developed by Ferranti Canada for Trans-Canada Air Lines in the late 1950s. It appears to be the first such system ever developed, predating the more famous SABRE system in the United States by about two years. Although Ferranti had high hopes that the system would be used by other airlines, no further sales were forthcoming and development of the system ended. Major portions of the transistor-based circuit design were put to good use in the Ferranti-Packard 6000 computer, which would later go on to see major sales in Europe as the ICT 1904.

In airline reservation systems, a record locator is an alphanumeric code used to identify and access a specific record on an airline’s reservation system. An airline’s reservation system automatically generates a unique record locator whenever a customer makes a reservation or booking, commonly known in the industry as an itinerary. When an itinerary is entered into the reservation system it is commonly known as a passenger name record (PNR). An itinerary may be entered into the system by a passenger, travel agent or airline employee.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amadeus IT Group</span> Spanish travel technology company

Amadeus IT Group, S.A. is a major Spanish multinational technology company that provides software solutions for the global travel and tourism industry. It is the world's leading provider of travel technology that focus on developing software for airlines, hotels, travel agencies, and other travel-related businesses to enhance their operations and customer experiences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Global distribution system</span> Type of computerised network system

A global distribution system (GDS) is a computerised network system owned or operated by a company that enables transactions between travel industry service providers, mainly airlines, hotels, car rental companies, and travel agencies. The GDS mainly uses real-time inventory from the service providers. Travel agencies traditionally relied on GDS for services, products and rates in order to provide travel-related services to the end consumers. Thus, a GDS can link services, rates and bookings consolidating products and services across all three travel sectors: i.e., airline reservations, hotel reservations, car rentals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ATPCO</span>

The Airline Tariff Publishing Company is a privately held corporation that engages in the collection and distribution of fare and fare-related data for the airline and travel industry. ATPCO currently works with more than 440 airlines worldwide, and it supplies more than 99% of the industry’s intermediated fare data to all the major airfare pricing engines, storing over 351 million active fares in its database and managing an average of 18 million fare changes each day.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">AJENTS</span>

AJENTS is one of the two original computer-based railway ticket issuing systems supplied to travel agencies in Britain. It allows agencies which are not connected to one of the major GDS networks to issue and print railway tickets from a standard personal computer, and submit revenue and accounting data securely to Rail Settlement Plan Ltd for allocation to the appropriate train operating companies.

Airline reservation systems (ARS) are systems that allow an airline to sell their inventory (seats). It contains information on schedules and fares and contains a database of reservations and of tickets issued. ARSs are part of passenger service systems (PSS), which are applications supporting the direct contact with the passenger.

Videcom International Limited is a United Kingdom travel technology company based in Henley-on-Thames. It designs, develops and provides modern computer reservations systems to airlines and the travel industry, specializing in the hosting and distribution of airline sales.

Amadeus is a computer reservation system owned by the Amadeus IT Group with headquarters in Madrid, Spain. The central database is located at Erding, Germany. The major development centres are located in Sophia Antipolis (France), Bangalore (India), London (UK), and Boston. In addition to airlines, the CRS is also used to book train travel, cruises, car rental, ferry reservations, and hotel rooms. Amadeus also provides New Generation departure control systems to airlines. Amadeus IT Group is a transaction processor for the global travel and tourism industry. The company is structured around two key related areas—its global distribution system and its "IT Solutions" business area.

Galileo is a computer reservations system (CRS) owned by Travelport. As of 2000, it had a 26.4% share of worldwide CRS airline bookings. In addition to airline reservations, the Galileo CRS is also used to book train travel, cruises, car rental, and hotel rooms.

A fare basis code is an alphabetic or alpha-numeric code used by airlines to identify a fare type and allow airline staff and travel agents to find the rules applicable to that fare. Although airlines now set their own fare basis codes, there are some patterns that have evolved over the years and may still be in use.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reservisor</span> Automated airline booking system

Starting in 1946, American Airlines developed a number of automated airline booking systems known as Reservisor. Although somewhat successful, American's unhappiness with the Reservisor systems led them to develop the computerized Sabre system used to this day.

Travicom was the trading name of Travel Automation Services Ltd, a travel technology company based in the United Kingdom providing a global distribution system between airlines and travel agencies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">TravelSky</span> Chinese technology Company

TravelSky Technology Limited is the dominant provider of information technology services to the Chinese air travel and tourism industries. Its clients include airlines, airports, air travel suppliers, travel agencies, individual and corporate travel consumers and cargo services. It is listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange and its majority shareholder or parent group is the China TravelSky Holding Company, a State-owned enterprise (SOE).

Infini is a computer reservations system based in Japan which provides its services in the Japanese market. It was created in 1990 by All Nippon Airways and Abacus (GDS) who currently own 100% of Infini. It utilises technology from Sabre Holdings to provide booking and ticketing capabilities to travel agencies in Japan.

The Electronic Miscellaneous Document (EMD) is an International Air Transport Association (IATA) standard for electronically documenting ancillary revenue; that is, all other sales and transactions between airlines and passengers besides electronic tickets. It is a step toward moving the airline industry to purely electronic transactions in the business-to-consumer context.

In the aviation industry, a pseudo city code,pseudo-city code, or office ID, is an alpha-numeric identifier for a corporate user of a computer reservation system (CRS) or global distribution system (GDS), typically a travel agency. The codes are typically 3 or 4 characters long,, and are unique to a specific office of a travel agency. They are used to associate each agency's bookings with the agency, and also to identify private fares available to the agency.

References

  1. ↑ "The ineluctable middlemen". The Economist. 25 August 2012. Retrieved 29 August 2012.
  2. ↑ Stewart, Jack. "How a Computer Outage Can Take Down a Whole Airline". Wired. ISSN   1059-1028 . Retrieved 2023-07-07.
  3. ↑ Pallini, Thomas (2021-05-21). "American Airlines and others carriers were left helpless after a system outage crippled operations, causing delays". Business Insider. Retrieved 2023-07-07.
  4. ↑ Levin, Tim (2021-06-15). "A computer-system outage grounded Southwest Airlines flights, causing delays for the second day in a row". Business Insider. Retrieved 2023-07-07.
  5. ↑ Ibrahim, Tony (2021-05-21). "Travellers still facing delays after Virgin and Rex airlines hit by global IT outage". ABC News. Retrieved 2023-07-07.
  6. 1 2 【Hitachi and Japanese National Railways】 MARS-1, Information Processing Society of Japan
  7. ↑ Early Computers: Brief History, Information Processing Society of Japan
  8. ↑ R. Blair Smith, OH 34. Oral history interview by Robina Mapstone, May 1980. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. http://www.cbi.umn.edu/oh/display.phtml?id=9 Archived 2002-08-16 at the Wayback Machine
  9. ↑ Strauss, Michael (2010), Value Creation in Travel Distribution
  10. ↑ "American Airlines - Direct Connect". Directconnect.aa.com. Archived from the original on 2012-08-31. Retrieved 2012-11-08.
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 "InteliSys amelia RES" . Ch-aviation. Retrieved 4 November 2020.
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