The recent signing of a reseller, services and support agreement between Datalex and EDS has paid early dividends with the announcement of the first major contract win under this agreement with Loyalty Gate.

Loyalty Gate operates the frequent flyer programmes of its member airlines, Swiss International Air Lines, SN Brussels Airlines and TAP Air Portugal. The project entails the implementation of the Datalex Internet booking platform to provide frequent flyer programme members with Web browser access to the airline seat inventory, which is hosted on the EDS axsRes reservation system. Members will be able to display flight schedules, search for qualifying airline seats, reserve award flights and pay for these seats using their miles and display their existing award bookings.

“Loyalty programmes are an important part of the framework in maintaining the relationship between an airline and its flyers and can open up new business opportunities for the airline. The Internet provides the ideal platform to integrate loyalty systems with passenger reservation and baggage systems and enables interactive, cost-efficient links between airlines, their alliances and their entire fare distribution network,” said Damian Hickey, SVP Business Development, Datalex. “EDS and Datalex both have long track records in serving the airline industry. Combining the technology expertise of Datalex with the implementation, business engineering and operational experience of EDS, creates a winning environment in which to deliver innovative IT solutions to this sector.”

Datalex is also working with EDS on a number of other projects under the reseller agreement that is expected to generate additional business over the coming year. The agreement between the companies broadens the scope of opportunity to help airlines operate more efficiently and cost effectively as the industry recovers.

Pierre Klatt, EDS Client Executive Transportation, said: “EDS chose Datalex because of its state of the art solutions and expertise in the travel industry. An additional criterion was based on EDS`s experience of working with Datalex on previous projects where Datalex provided similar IT tools and know how and contributed to the respective success stories. The reseller agreement is, therefore, to be seen not only as the continuation of this co-operation, but also in the context of a mutually beneficial relationship, providing robust and flexible solutions for the industry, similar to the one implemented for Loyalty Gate. The success of the Loyalty Gate project is, to a large extent, the result of a strong partnership between our two companies.”

And Urs Läuchli, Loyalty Gate VP Operations, adds: “It is a big challenge to develop and operate various frequent flyer programmes, tailored to the individual needs of different airlines, on one single IT platform. This creates substantial synergies and cost savings for the airlines. The Datalex booking engine for the three frequent flyer web sites of our customer airlines is an important part of this platform and has been implemented and adapted to our requirements in record time; we are very pleased with the performance of the engine.” 

Related stories on ITN:

(13/02/2003) Datalex Automates Corporate Travel Program for Siemens
(10/02/2003) Best Western Adopts Datalex Booking Technology
(06/02/2003) Datalex Enables Saudi Arabian Airlines to Commence Online Booking Operations
——-