A Golf Blog

Looking toward 2005

I have finally managed to carve out some quite time and began to wonder what the New Year will bring. Looking back, it is clear the person of the year for 2004 was Mother Nature – the grand lady pretty much roughed up the entire world.

Will a revamped airline industry emerge? United Airlines pilots pension program has been moved to the government’s Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. They were already operating at a $23 billion deficit – now the PBGC will be adding about $1.4 billion additional dollars to the already staggering deficit.

On top of that, the United flight attendants voted to authorize wildcat strikes if the company carries out it’s threat to break their contract and implement new wage and benefit cuts. Yikes!

Then there’s the strife at US Airways. Baggage problems at Philadelphia were caused in part by a winter storm and were exacerbated by unusual high number of employees calling in sick. So, the company asked their employees to give up a day off and volunteer (translate, not get paid) to help unscramble the mess. What they got were mostly mangers from around the US Airways system. Looks like they’ve been to the well one time to many.

Travelocity Launches Flight Navigator

Flight Navigator, Travelocity’s new flight shopping path, is being rolled out and expected to be fully deployed by the holidays.

In addition to an updated design, Flight Navigator debuts new features. Customers will now be able to indicate date flexibility, + or – 3days, on either side of the departure date, return date, or both. Customers will also be able to choose up to 3 departure airports and 3 return airports to compare fares.

It will also take some of the guess work our of the purchase decision by highlighting flights and fares where there are 3 or fewer seats left. Customers can also view each flight’s seat maps before picking their flight. So, if you are not fond of a middle seat in the next to last row, you’ll know before hand that is all that is left.

We got a preview of the changes and they are great. Next time you are on Travelocity, you might be directed to one of the boxes that is hosting Flight Navigator.

Blogging at Travelocity

I seem to have created something of a stir at Travelocity. I’ve recently sent along links to posts from disgruntled Travelocity customers and Travelocity marketing has taken notice. They have noticed that blogs are a great communication tool. They have also noticed that blogs facilitate things getting done. Most of all they have noticed that blogs have influence. And, in each case, Travelocity has reached out to each customer. There is nothing like personal customer service.

So, where is this taking us? Well, I had a great conversation with Patty Hagar (Travelocity Marketing) about blogs, RSS, the influence of linking, getting things done, and customer service. Many thanks for the encouragement from Tim Bray and Robert Scoble and for their help in getting Sabre involved in corporate blogging.

I think, within the next week or so, I’ll be talking about blogs that feature the goings on at Travelocity.

Sweet!

Customer debugs competitor web site

Jeremy Keith at adactio.com had a problem at eBookers.com. He’s planning in advance for SXSW in Austin, Texas. Seems there was a problem with a java script that validated his birthday year. Not wanting to give false personal information, Jeremy opted for another online travel site.

Wow, talk about fragile – it’s that easy.

GDS Dissatisfaction

A little more than a week ago, I came across a post by Adam Smith, CEO of start-up Traveling Party Inc. and host of website TripInvite.com. He wrote a frustrated account of how he was basically unsuccessful in getting API level access to a GDS’ web services. This was about a year ago and today, he has managed to get GDS access only via a third party, and according to Adam, having access does not always guarantee reliable responses.

I contacted Adam and offered to broker a meeting with our web services team. That session took place and today, our small business team is looking at how to best get TripInvite.com connected to Sabre.

I guess if you want to be part of the conversation, you have to be an active listener. So far, it’s working for me.

Henry in La Jolla

I use both NewsGator and PubSub.com and occasionally, they will hit upon an opportunity nugget. The past two days had a couple of challenges.

This one’s from Henry in La Jolla with a nightmare account of being on hold with Travelocity. I read his post and all he was trying to do was change a return flight from sometime in January to February. Now, it might have been complicated by the fact that it was an international itinerary and we know how airlines deal with changes although there was no mention in his post about a change fee.

Anyway, after more than 3 hours on the phone, the return reservations had been changed.

I passed this along to Travelocity’s Service Excellence advocate. Maybe he can help with identifying what went amiss.

Since yesterday, I’ve heard from Henry, he was surprised that anyone outside his circle of friends and family would read his blog. But, he was equally pleased that someone from Travelocity contacted him. And when Travelocity followed up to make sure his tickets arrived as promised, they found the tickets had arrived a day early.

You know what? That makes me smile. You know what else; the dialogue about blogs at Sabre and Travelocity has intensified. But, that’s another post.

Scratching the Business Need Itch

As my work team, Labs, moves into next year, it will be with a new leader, Kim Farrow. I’ve worked with Kim since 1996 and since then we’ve enjoyed a great relationship and much success.

What’s really got me jazzed for 2005, is the change of direction she’d like to see. We used to solve business problems with advanced technology – fun work but when it came to getting it moved to production, it was like participating in a full contact sport. Body parts all over the place and while some of our solutions seemed no brainer, it involved new technology and often times, specialized support. Not a lot of goodness.

Our focus in 2005 will be needs based and we’re going to key on special areas as they’re related to travel. Did you know that 57 percent of Amazon.com sales are of books that aren’t available anywhere else? We’re going to try to take that concept into the travel space. I expect we’ll stub our toes along the way but the uptick could be huge.

When asked about my personal goals, 2005 will be for Sabre to deploy an enterprise blogging tool with an outward face. I've had a lot of encouragement along the way - hat tips to Robert Scoble and Tim Bray. As a matter of fact, a few days ago I asked for suggestions and got a good one from Tim Bray. He suggested going right to the top so I’m working on a note to our CEO to introduce blogging and a perhaps demo. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Corporate NewsGator

I had a great conversation this past Friday with Mike Lombardo from NewsGator. He’s looking for way to expand NewsGator’s customer base and since I’d been banging the corporate blogging drum, he dropped me an email and wanted to know if I had a few minutes to chat.

We talked all about how useful RSS is and could be if it was deployed in more corporations. It could be a good adjunct to existing project planning tools as well as a starting place for improving communications. Imagine not having to check for updates – what a time saver.

Let’s not forget that it could be just as powerful outside the tech industry. It would be an excellent vehicle to foster relationships between companies and customers. It’s also an opportunity to get the customer base involved with what’s going on and finally it’s a vehicle that enables customer feedback to be incorporated into the product planning cycle. These are just a few examples – and for sure there’s more. Any specifics come to mind?

We also talked about filtering feeds for specific keywords or themes. I’d like to be able to subscribe to the Washington Post RSS feeds and only get content that’s theme related, like references to travel or specific keywords and then have it posted to my online or outlook edition NewsGator. I gave the Washington Post a try and they publish excerpts – had to unsubscribe. Getting a teaser in Outlook or in the NewsGator online version does nothing but add to frustration. I use NewsGator and outlook to prevent me from having to go to a web site. I don’t need the extra keystrokes and it’s also a time waster.

I’d like to see anyone that publishes excerpts switch to full content. Anyone else share my thoughts?

By the way, Mike set me up with their online version – pretty slick. Thanks a bunch. It works and I’m a happy customer.

Travel Agency Technology Perceptions

James Governor at RedMonk had some interesting suggestions on how Sabre and the other GDS’ could improve travel agencies technology perceptions. One way to do that is opening up APIs, ala Amazon.com, Google, etc. which in turn makes it easier for others to participate – Sabre facilitating an Architecture of Participation – catchy phrase, great article.

Since the mid 70’s, the systems that support the GDS’ and the travel industry have evolved into complex and proprietary application environments. Only within the last few years, the GDS’ have begun to unravel the complexity by migrating applications to mid-range systems using commodity hardware and operating systems. While we still have a way to go, Sabre has made great strides in that space and has also embraced open source.

I think Sabre has begun facilitating an architecture of participation. We have published a series of web services. There are 22 services that provide base functionality - book flights, cars, hotels, create PNRs, etc. In addition to those, there are an additional 32 that provide enhanced functionality. While it’s probably not interesting to anyone not associated with travel, an overview of what web services Sabre offers as well as an index and explanation of each service can be found on our web services web site. My work group, Labs, is working with the web services team to find ways to streamline our processes and make it easier to consume those services.

We still have a good way to go and I believe that one path there is for Sabre to get into open and public dialogues with our customers. Our view of what’s best for our customers is no longer satisfactory.

Economic Fallout

I knew that Delta’s pull out of Fort Worth / Dallas would have a rippling effect but I had no idea it would be this far reaching.

Delta’s ninety percent cutback means 3400 non-airport jobs will be lost in addition to the 3600 Delta employees. It also means that $177 million worth of airplanes will be removed from local school district tax rolls as well as $290,000 in lost airport vendor sales tax.

On top of that, according to a study done by economists Bernard Weinstein and Terry Clower of the University of North Texas in Denton, business sectors like banks, law firms, and real estate agencies, would account for an additional $13 million.

Local schools have begun planning on how to operate with $3 million removed from their coffers.

The outlook’s not good.