Griffin
Marine Travel, the world`s largest marine travel agency has selected Amadeus
as its global distribution system and
Amadeus Vista - the travel industry`s first fully graphical reservations
platform - for use in its offices worldwide.

Griffin Marine Travel will use Amadeus Vista as their reservation solution
in fifteen countries across multiple systems. Amadeus Vista is designed to
make travel agencies more productive and profitable. Available in over 50
countries, it offers agents the most extensive level of functionality and
tools of any front-office platform offered by a GDS today.

“No other GDS could offer us a single solution that would enable us to
connect and streamline our 23 offices worldwide,” said Griffin Marine
Travel`s Managing Director, George Boyes, who identified the
`across-all-markets` feature as a decisive reason to switch to Amadeus.

“By using one common platform,” explained Stephen Boyes, Director for the
marine travel agency, “Griffin now has the ability to centralise functions
and move people around the world, while gaining economies of scale and cost
savings that we pass back to our customers. Amadeus Vista is truly a global
platform because it has the same look and feel, regardless of where you`re
working in the Griffin Marine global network.”

Griffin, whose clients include cruise lines, the freighter industry, and
offshore market, began using Amadeus Vista in April to offer the same
comprehensive 24/7 service all over the globe. Implementation for most
Griffin offices will be complete by July. “Using Vista, several centres now
become one,” said Stephen Boyes, “so we can have a single invoicing centre
instead of 23 different locations. It makes training much easier too.”

 

Other major selling points of Vista for Griffin were its customisation
features, great flexibility and capability to quickly adapt to the agency`s
complex workflow. .“Functionalities of the system, profiles, quality
control, and time response are vital in our business,” Boyes said. “But
being able to offer new pricing models for our customers is also important,
and through Amadeus Vista we are getting that additional customised
functionality.

“Amadeus Vista is an extremely easy-to-learn front-office platform,” says
Peter Cacioppo, Sales Director at Amadeus UK. “It brings innovative
functionality and fresh flexibility right to the travel agent`s desktop. It
enables any agent, from beginner to expert, to quickly enhance their
productivity, customer service, and revenue. With Amadeus Vista, agents
focus on making a sale rather than trying to book a sale.”

Amadeus Vista gives agents the option to choose either the traditional-style
command page format (cryptic mode) or a point-and-click graphical user
interface. The clarity of its user-friendly interface makes it much simpler
for travel agents to perform otherwise complex reservation functions.

Booking travel for the marine industry is more complicated than booking
other travel because it includes lots of international travel segments and
small, far-away port cities that are not common to standard GDS tables. For
the marine industry, Griffin deals with net fares and non-combinable
contracts with a lot of segment ticketing, which is not easily priced in a
GDS. Many of the automation features available to the corporate travel
manager are not applicable in the marine industry because of the way those
fares are filed - all of which speaks to Vista`s capacity for customisation
and the product`s ability to serve the specialized requirements of travel
professionals.

“Amadeus Vista is a global solution for the travel management company
seeking a competitive edge in today`s cyclical travel environment,” Cacioppo
concluded. “It`s an example of how Amadeus continues to provide creative
solutions to niche and mainstream agencies worldwide.”

Related stories on ITN:

(18/06/2003) Amadeus Reports Growth in Hotel Bookings

(13/06/2003) Amadeus AgentNet Captures the Best of the Web

VIA Travel Group Signs Six Year Contract with Amadeus

——-