In the news – Jetstar, Tiger Airways, Trust, ONYX, Asiana, Sabre, SATS, SITA

Jetstar’s first Travel Shop debuts in Jakarta

The Jetstar Group has opened its first travel shop in Jakarta, Indonesia, making it even easier for Indonesian customers to book and pay for any fare across the entire Jetstar network

Located in the busy Kelapa Gading district the retail outlet is operated in collaboration with partner Holiday Tours and Travel. It currently offers a range of payment options, including direct cash payments. Hotels, insurance and travel packages will be introduced soon. It is opened from 10am to 7pm seven days a week.

Jetstar Asia and Valuair CEO, Barathan Pasupathi, said Jetstar was focussed on looking at innovative distribution solutions to make the carrier’s low fares accessible to more people.

“Understanding our customer’s preference for cash payments and the low levels of credit card ownership in Indonesia, we have created our very first retail outlet to make flying with us even easier.

He added the investment in this new travel shop, the first retail outlet for the Jetstar Group, reflected the importance of Indonesia to the Jetstar network.

“The Jetstar travel shop will help us to grow our customer base in Indonesia and will support Jetstar as we explore future growth in this market,” Pasupathi added.

The Jetstar Group currently operates 80 weekly services to Jakarta, Denpasar, Surabaya and Medan.

New mobile app from Tiger Airways

Tiger Airways has launched a new native app for the Android, iPhone and iPad platforms. It allows customers to search for the best flight deals, book tickets, select seats, and store their personal information for future use, all through their mobile device.

First put on the various mobile platforms in July the app has been downloaded more than 100,000 times prior to this official launch. It was developed over a period of six months, following consumer research on customers’ needs and preferences when using a travel app.

The app’s key features include:

• Flight Bookings: The “Book Flights” option allows customers to navigate back and forth to any step in the booking process, and along the way access complete flight information and updated fee breakdowns as and when new services are added.
• Flight Deals: The “Deals” option lists Tiger Airways’ best deals across all destinations, and can be sorted by price, date, departure and destination cities.
• Personal Flight Information: The “My Flights” option allows customers to securely store and easily retrieve all flight information booked through the app or online, simply by entering the booking reference number, first name and last name, on the “My Flights” page.
• Personal Profile: This feature allows customers to securely store their personal information, including passport details, contact number, email address and mailing address, which can be retrieved at any time to speed up subsequent bookings.

Tiger Airways will be introducing more features to the app including multi-language options, offline payment modes, flight status updates and mobile check-in, in the coming months.

The app for Blackberry will be released later this year.

ONYX in CRS deal with Trust International

ONYX Hospitality Group has chosen Trust International as its Centralised Reservation System (CRS) for CRS services for their rapidly expanding brands in the Asia Pacific region.

Stefan Wolf, ONYX’s VP Revenue Management, said the booming Asian market made it critical for the group to have a CRS platform, which could help it achieve a single image inventory.

“Trust’s ability to integrate multiple systems to a single platform and their consistent follow through has been essential in our decision making,” he added.

Richard Wiegmann,Trust’s Managing Director said his company developed its products and service with extensive customer input on how to provide the best, state-of-the-art distribution service and tools.

“We understand how important it is that we make sure these tools are easy to understand and use and also offer long term productivity. The result is a very reliable responsive, scalable CRS system that is perfectly suited to hotel groups worldwide whether they have 6, 000 or 1,000 properties.  As we partner with ONYX, yourVoyager will meet their needs every step of the way as they execute their ambitious expansion plans throughout the Asia-Pacific region.”

Formed in March 2010, ONYX operates four brands namely Saffron, Amari, Shama and OZO. Its portfolio includes 34 operational properties across Asia, with more properties being developed in the next few years.

Picture: (L-R) Stefan Wolf, ONYX VP revenue management; Peter Henley, ONYX CEO; Richard Wiegmann, Trust managing director; Christine Tan, Trust VP sales Asia Pacific

Asiana modernises call centre with Sabre

Asiana Airlines has implemented the Sabre Qik Solution, which creates a modern, intelligent and graphical view to the airline’s reservations system.

The Sabre Qik Solution, from Sabre Airline Solutions’ SabreSonic Customer Sales and Service (CSS) suite, is used by airlines globally to create graphical interfaces that enhance the user experience while improving efficiency and reducing cost.

“The Qik Solution is used within our SabreSonic CSS reservation system, but is flexible and robust enough to fully support airlines using reservations and departure control systems from any other technology provider,” said Theo Panagiotoulias, Vice President, Asia Pacific, Sabre Airline Solutions (pictured left)..

Sabre’s Qik Solution allows airlines to build their workflows and processes directly into a system’s front-end. This means airlines can quickly update and communicate changes to its frontline staff – important in today’s competitive environment.

Seok Nam Goh, Asiana’s Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Airline & Infrastructure, said the airline is making several technology enhancements in its call centre environment and the Qik Solution is an integral part of its system enhancement roadmap

New bag management technology at Singapore Changi Airport

SATS, the gateway services and food solutions provider at Singapore Changi Airport, has invested in the latest bag management technology from global IT provider,SITA, to manage the 15 million bags it handles each year.

SATS is one of the first to deploy the new version of SITA’s BagManager, which is already in operation at more than 120 airports worldwide.

SITA’s baggage technology eliminates flight delays caused by loading issues and ensures that the ground handler knows where all bags are on an aircraft so they can be removed quickly if the passenger fails to board.

The new version of BagManager, which is in operation in Singapore and 10 other airports across the globe, can be implemented very quickly and requires less system downtime. Upgrades are also installed more efficiently. Its browser-based user interface improves daily productivity allowing bags to be managed efficiently.

Denis Marie, SATS’ Senior Vice President of Apron Services, said SITA BagManager has been used at Changi Airport for eight years. “The new version not only provides us with an improved baggage management solution, it is also more user-friendly and cost-effective.”

The SITA 2012 Baggage Report, the industry’s annual report on baggage handling, reported the best-ever results for baggage handling in 2011 with a 20% reduction in mishandled bags while passenger numbers grew 6.9%. This represented a cost saving of US$650 million for airlines.