The Travel Technology Initiative (TTI) Winter Forum will be held at the Institution of Electrical Engineers, Savoy Place in London on the 7th of December 2005 on the subject of working with Online Distributors.
For this Forum, TTI assembled a team of experts who have hands-on experience of connecting travel companies to online distributors.

Travel companies are realising that it is not good enough just to have a Web site of one’s own. The online opportunity is far greater than this.

Distributors such as the online travel agents and the new meta-search engines are influencing an increasing proportion of the travel market. One of the keys to their success is their ability to offer searchable and bookable content; accommodation, holidays, flights and other product that can be booked and paid for in real-time.

The watchwords are real-time. Consumers do not want to have to wait to find out whether a product is available. They are online and they want it now. If travel companies are working with online distributors this implies either handing over inventory for a distributor to load on its own reservation system or inter-connecting systems so that inventory is searched and booked real-time on the host system.

It is the latter that is the subject of this Forum. TTI’s pioneering work with its TORIX XML message set is paving the way for easier connectivity between travel companies and online distributors; but how easy is it to achieve this in practice? What pitfalls does one need to look out for and are the benefits of real-time connectivity substantial enough to warrant the technical effort? These are just some of the questions to be addressed.

The Forum: Interactive discussion. Your opportunity to quiz the experts on the online distribution issues most pertinent to your organisation.

• Moderator: Paul Richer, Genesys

Keynote speakers of TTI’s Winter Forum will be:

• Rob Howell, Managing Director, Multicom

Multicom provides pioneering online booking engines for agents, operators and web brands. The company is playing a key role in powering the leisure travel industry’s Internet marketplace. Customers include Thomas Cook, First Choice, Going Places, Page and Moy, Travelocity and Virgin Travelstore. Multicom creates technology that enables travel companies to sell on the web and through call centres. The company’s systems allow agents, operators and online brands to distribute products from scheduled, charter and low-cost airlines, hotels and tour operators.

• Gordon Maynard, Technical Director, Teletext

Teletext was formed in 1992 to operate text services on ITV & C4 and established itself as a distribution channel for holidays and flights. In recent years it has been developing new services on digital TV and the Internet with teletextholidays website now one of the top travel Web sites in the country.

• James Clarke, Head of IT, Travelsupermarket website

James worked in the Corporate IT Department of a global manufacturer where he worked on projects throughout Europe, Asia and the US in a variety of IT areas including ERP, CRM and E-business. James returned to the UK and started working at Travelsupermarket website. He has been focused on Screen Scraping and Aggregation technologies in the financial, insurance and travel market places. Travelsupermarket website is now servicing over a million quotes a day from over 300 different data providers.

• Peter Barnsley, Information Systems Manager, Seligo

After working for Siemens within an IT Support role, Peter studied Computer Science and Astrophysics at Keele University. Peter’s first position upon graduation was as IT Manager for Discover Travel and Tours. During 2