TDS Europe 2006 special: By EyeforTravel Correspondent

Over the next year or so, Virgin Blue will focus on a number of key areas including deployment of a new booking engine and re-development of its website to better support its new loyalty programme. (6/20/2006)

Sharing plans, Steven Greenway, head of e-Commerce, Virgin Blue told EyeforTravel.com's Ritesh Gupta: We will focus on deployment of a new booking engine that will include a shopping basket function in order to purchase additional services such as insurance etc; Re-development of our website to better support our new loyalty programme; Extensive development of Blue Holidays, our dynamic packaging holiday programme; Further enhancement of our online services such as change/cancel online; Further functionality development of our API service exposing new services such as check-in.?

On technological developments in connectivity, driving down costs for all types of travel companies, and to what extent will improved interoperability cut distribution costs, Greenway says: our API (Based on XML) is classic example of this where companies that previous utilised GDS?in order to get pricing and inventory now by-pass this. Agencies and corporate now have full access to our fares, inventory etc. giving them unequalled flexibility.?

Greenway also acknowledged that there will be heavy emphasis on deploying API solutions and therefore diminishing focus on GDS?unless pricing becomes more realistic, citing example of the full content deals now on offer in the US).

The growth in popularity of airline websites will continue however these sites will become more akin to online retailers than just an airline site,?says Greenway.

On major challenges, he said: through time we have become a more complex company (e.g. we now have a loyalty programme - Velocity) yet we started our airlines with very basic systems e.g. Revenue Management systems. Recently however, some of key core systems have begun to show the strain of a growing airline and have not been able to deal with the complexity that is now inherent in our operating model and indeed market. The past year has seen an aggressive effort to replace or update many of our systems to support growth - This is costly and time-consuming endeavour.?