Give a tour operator or Villa specialist preferential rates, the power to reserve flights, hotels and car hire at the touch of a button and a website to show these products to their clients and they will have the power of a Travel Agent.
I know by having and using the tools provided in the Sienna package if I were to carry on with Cape Villas or Experience Africa I’d have the power to take them a long way, really compete on the world stage. The GDS is a great tool, as is the customisable website, combine them with the customer relationship and accounting tools, and it’s an even playing field. A one man show could be as effective as a Travel Agent. Eventually linking to Sienna will become essential for the industry.
ADS – Alternate Distribution System
As best I remember 2009 saw ADS’s overtake GDS’s in volume of tourism bookings, There are thousand maybe hundreds or thousands of ADS. Sienna is and ADS.. The difference between Siena and a normal ADS is Sienna main task is to connect to other ADS’s
The companies we wish to interact with such as Leo Trippi have small portfolios maybe 50 venues to which they control the reservations, by tapping into their databases we add unique inventory to our portfolio. If we look at field AB “Outsourced” in the financial spreadsheet, this money has been set aside solely for the purpose of creating such integrations. By month thirty I have targeted 1730 companies to be linked in this way and set aside +/-$600,000 in programmers to do this maybe we need more maybe less but add the portfolios of 1730 or so independents to the GDS portfolio and we will store more travel reservation information than any other company. We will ourselves be considered a GDS.