THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE I 39 The Review THE TECHNOLOGY ➔ QUNO claims a USP in busy rail market
TRANSPARENCY of fares, ease of use and a revolutionary refund system are key elements in UK rail booking system QUNO’s claim that it beats competitors hands down, writes Mike Swindell. For the moment, though, the system does not have a business account set-up, so competes in the leisure and unmanaged business travel markets. Business users will be mainly SMEs, with some interest coming from corporate users given the flexibility to work through expense accounting rather than a corporate booking tool – although QUNO managing director Jeremy Acklam told The Business Travel Magazine that a corporate structure could be introduced “in the further distant future”. Apart from the fact that QUNO
does not require any registration to start hunting for fares, its most obvious appeal lies in its ease of use and transparency of display. Rather than the long list of fares
that flood on to the screen when using other rail booking systems, QUNO’s display organises the results into three columns – non- flexible, semi-flexible and fully- flexible fares. This gives the user an instant view of the best price in
The other big stick that QUNO is
using to beat competitors with is its instant online refund facility. As long as a ticket has not been picked up at the station, a customer can cancel and get the price immediately credited back to the payment card. “It’s about a five second job,” claims Acklam. “So business travellers who are faced with occasional cancellations of meetings can improve cash flow with instant online refunds and do not have to tie up clerical effort in trying to get tickets refunded after the event,” he says. At the time of writing, QUNO
each category and the ability to make a one-page choice. A further innovation, due to be implemented as this issue of The Business Travel Magazine goes to press, is a fully comprehensive return fare display. Online systems currently
show outbound and return fares separately, leaving users trying to work out in their heads which of any number of combinations is the best or cheapest. This is made even more difficult when the selection of a return fare
changes the terms and conditions of an option chosen for the outbound leg. “What we are doing is to combine the outbound and return fares and quote a true return price for the various combinations of ticket, showing the best value,” says Acklam. “This is something that customers have been telling us is missing, so we are going back to old principles, but in a new way, by saying to the customer that this is the price you are going to pay,” he explains.
➔ Heathrow splashes out on IT
AIRPORT operator BAA is investing over £100million in its IT systems at London Heathrow in order to provide better real time information and to help it react better in times of crisis. Chief information officer Philip Langsdale has outsourced the project to Capgemini, which will work towards four key aims: to supply better information both online and at the airport; to provide airlines with the systems and infrastructure they need for check-in procedures, baggage handling and gate management; to implement new systems to help the airport and airlines deal with unforeseen events and incidents; and to simplify an unnecessarily complex set of systems at the airport so as to give Heathrow a better quality of service and reduce overall costs.
was offering only UK rail bookings but had plans to include US Amtrak fares by the end of April, with European rail journeys to follow “relatively shortly afterwards”, says Acklam. Eurostar services to Paris and Brussels have proved to be a business travel winner and with Deutsche Bahn undergoing a Channel Tunnel safety assessment, it is possible that other high-speed European rail options including Amsterdam and Frankfurt could be on the QUNO menu for British travellers late next year or early 2013.
TURNING ON TO TELEPRESENCE
”Our priority is improving our passengers' experiences and getting the best value we can on behalf of our airline customers,” says Langsdale. ”We will have spent over £400million on IT in the five-year period ending in 2013 as part of a much wider capital spending programme
designed to modernise every aspect of Heathrow. I recognise technology on its own cannot deliver these improvements, but it is a crucial enabler.” The new IT systems will support
90 airlines, 12 ground handlers, 1,300 flights a day and 65million passengers a year.
TRAVEL buyers are increasingly turning to telepresence and videoconferencing facilities as an alternative to business trips when the risk of travel disruption is high. That's according to Teliris which says its users can hold 'face-to- face' meetings with business partners and clients from all over the world without setting foot outside their office. The technology specialist says the trend for use of such tools now also extends beyond the boardroom to the average desktop computer, with high- quality facilities functioning perfectly well on general purpose networks thanks to its lower bandwidth.
56 I THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE
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