Cathay Pacific
signed a deal with Abacus International to implement the Abacus GroupPush solution in its Hong Kong and South Korean markets this month.

Abacus
GroupPush provides airlines a solution that enables them to release the ownership of the Group Passenger Number Reference (PNR) created in their system to Abacus travel agents. Travel agents currently have limited access to group booking information which is kept in the airlines’ records.

Abacus GroupPush gives greater control to travel agents as they can service the group bookings directly from the Abacus system without having to contact the airlines’ office first. Airlines in turn can dispense with manual administration tasks and answering travel agency and passenger queries.

GroupPush is one of the three Group options offered by Abacus to its participating carriers. The other two are GroupClaim and GroupRequest. Abacus Group booking tools are already being used by a number of carriers including Singapore Airlines, Silkair, Philippine Airlines, Garuda Indonesia and Asiana Airlines across several markets.

“In the current economic climate, we see more companies including airlines and travel agencies looking to lessen the load of labour-intensive operations in order to save costs and improve efficiency. We have therefore developed streamlined tools such as Abacus GroupPush to help the travel community concentrate on their key strengths so as to keep business flowing at full efficiency levels.” said Mr Rogelio Sarreal, Vice President and Head of Associate Sales.

“We decided to implement Abacus GroupPush as we wanted to reduce the manual labour involved in phone calls and faxes needed to process each group booking. As travel agents can now manipulate group bookings directly off the Abacus system, we can relieve our staff from PNR servicing and focus on other revenue generating tasks instead.” said Simon Ng, Manager Distribution Systems, Cathay Pacific.

Related stories on ITN:

(17/03/2003) Inflight Email Now Available on Cathay Pacific Flights

(27/11/2002) Sabre offers e-tickets for SWISS and Cathay Pacific

(15/10/2002) Points Welcomes Cathay Pacific`s Asia Milese Solution

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