U.K.-based multinational travel management
company ATPI has started offering online booking tool Zeno on an exclusive
basis in Europe. The period of exclusivity will last until ATPI has finished
helping New Zealand-based travel tech provider Serko customize Zeno for the
European market, ATPI director of U.K. sales and operations Katie Skitterall said
at last week's Business Travel Show in London.
Zeno was originally created to handle one-way
fare constructions, which is the norm in Australasia. Fares in Europe, however,
often are calculated on a return basis, even if different carriers are selected
for the outbound and inbound journeys. The companies are working on that
adaptation, and Skitterall said ATPI also has helped Zeno create separate
references for passengers booked onto the same itinerary. "Other booking
tools were struggling to get to the same point," she said.
Another focus of the collaboration has been to
source content of importance to the European market. For example, said
Skitterall, Lufthansa Group's lowest fares, Economy Light, are no longer
available through global distribution systems, so ATPI is piping them into
Serko via web-based aggregator Travelfusion.
Skitterall also revealed that ATPI is piloting
a calendar-based chatbot booking function for Zeno, scheduled for release
worldwide in the second quarter of 2019. "You can tell the chatbot
something like, 'Book me a flight for next week,' and it will go to your
Outlook calendar for details of your meeting so it can build suggestions for a
trip," she said. "The tool starts to learn what the passenger wants
while still offering options that are policy compliant."
In London, ATPI also showcased the most recent
updates to its ATPI Analytics reporting platform, including predictive features
that model how much a company could save based on the number of days that flights
are booked in advance or through measures like switching cabins. ATPI Analytics
also now combines invoice and expense data to help customers calculate total
cost of trip covering pre-trip transactions like air, hotel and visas and
on-trip costs like meals and taxis.