In an effort to speed up the recovery of the travel industry, Abacus International is assisting its partner hotels promote their special travel industry rates to the travel agency community. Abacus is doing this by offering them free publicity through its Abacus Newsline and specially created Abacus Direct Reference System (DRS) agency tools.

Abacus

Newsline is a two-line advertising message that appears on the first screen of information when travel agents sign-in to the Abacus system. Abacus is now offering this feature free-of-charge during this period to their hotel associates as part of their Helpline program for their suppliers.

Similarly, DRS pages (Y/NAR/PRO) have been created and each hotel chain is assigned a page where offers are listed by country, city and hotel properties and special industry rates. Travel agents can now view at a glance what offers are currently available and then check availability and make bookings through the Abacus system. Abacus partner, Sabre, the US-based leader in the electronic distribution of travel and travel related services, has also agreed to offer sign-in messages to publicise the DRS pages to their travel agents.

“The new promotional rates are amongst the lowest the hotel industry has ever offered and the hotel chains have gone through great effort to negotiate these rates with their Asia Pacific properties for the travel industry. Abacus started this programme as we feel it is our duty to keep the travel trade fully informed of these offers and aid them in taking advantage of them.  We have a number of hotel chains on this project and we welcome other hotel chains to contact us if they want to be included in the Helpline program,” said Mr Toby March, Vice President, Travel Extensions (Hotel & Car).

Currently participating in the Helpline programme are the Hyatt, Le Meridien, Marriott, Shangri-La, and Starwood hotel chains.

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(20/06/2003) ABACUS to Cushion Impact of SARS on Malaysian Travel Agents

(30/05/2003) ABACUS Eases Online Bookings for Asiana Airlines

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