Abacus International said that a strong response from customers to the benefits of ‘subscriber last mile’ monitoring system (SLMS) introduced in July this year had driven the expansion of the programme to more than a thousand travel agency locations in nine markets.

 

The Subscriber ‘Last Mile’ System detects problems in local telecommunications networks which connect Abacus and the travel agencies subscribing to its Global Distribution System (GDS) for airline, hotel and other travel bookings. The system allows Abacus to work with local network providers to identify and rectify local network problems, thus reducing service interruption and improving service quality to Abacus-connected travel agents.

Ms Angela Liew, General Manager of Abacus Distribution Systems (Hong Kong) Ltd. enthused about the SLMS customisation for the Hong Kong market.

“The Hong Kong market is very competitive. To meet the demanding service level here, Abacus customised the SLMS to perform more frequent checks, enabling identification and resolution of glitches in shorter time. This has greatly improved our service to our customers,” Ms Angela Liew said.

The SLMS which provides information on overall travel agent last mile availability, response time and the number of network errors, was initially launched in Pakistan, Vietnam, Philippines and Cambodia in July, and has since been extended to five other markets – Sri Lanka, India, Hong Kong, China and Taiwan. Abacus will deploy the SLMS in Thailand and Korea by the end of the year.

Mr John Lim, Vice President of IT and Operations for Abacus International, said the continuing roll-out of the SLMS since its launch demonstrates Abacus’ commitment to keep adding more value for the Asian travel industry.

“In addition to monitoring last mile availability, the SLMS is now also capable of testing last mile quality and capacity. As a quality assurance tool, it can also be used to commission new circuits for new travel agents,” said Mr Lim.