Understanding the System

Within this industry there are a number of different systems which are used worldwide, by both travel agents and tour operators. A number of these systems i have already mentioned in my previous posts, but i will go on to talk about these in more depth. Along with the Global Distribution Systems, there is another system called Viewdata. 

What is Viewdata?
Viewdata is a booking system which was created in the late 1970's and early 1980's to make it easier for travel consultants to check the availability of holidays and to place bookings. It proved to be a huge success and travel consultants up and down the country started to use it. Viewdata soon got the reputation to be the trade's favourite booking system. It was so successful because it was simple to use, and it did exactly what it said it would do: look up holidays and complete bookings. 

But it was not long til travel consultants found faults with the system. in the early 1980's a large number of travel consultants were using different systems and changing to all have one system created a lot of fuss and confusion. Some travel agents did not want to move over to Viewdata as they had the reassurance and security of the system they had already been using. It was proved by a small number of travel agents that they could not handle more than one system, all of the systems are very different in the way they book holidays and this caused upset throughout the travel industry. Once again a solution had to be created...

Even though travel agents and consultants all around the world were talking about how fantastic Viewdata was there was always going to be some flaws. Travel experts questioned whether this was the beginning of the end, and whether the travel industry could cope with the demands from customers, and the unfamiliarity with the system. On the other hand this system did allow operators to distribute holidays over the internet  something they struggled to do before. 


I looked at Viewdata's website and discovered that they are soon to be bringing out a new and improved system to offer the travel industry. It states that 'Viewdata remains the tool used for booking 98% of the traditional package holiday and charter flights'. It goes on to explain how Viewdata understand that in today's world consumers have better sales tools then the trade but there new and improved Viewdata brings all these tools together. They are able to display hotel photographs, and in depth descriptions of both the hotel, airline, surrounding area etc. 

I believe this is a very risky procedure for Viewdata to carry out, the reason for this being that it will have cost them as a company a lot of many to produce, and now there are many high established global distribution systems out there, will it really take off and be number one. 

http://www.viewdataplus.com/