Interview With Joe Greenwald,
Director of Online Services for TravelBug.com

by Don Hamilton

TravelBug.com is an online travel agency produced by Associated Travel International (ATI). ATI has been a major force in business travel, partially due to a division of ATI called AQUA. AQUA is a computer program that constantly checks your tickets after you book, to see if a cheaper fare or some other conveyance you might want, such as window or aisle seats, is available. The computer will not only constantly check the airline computers, but it will book the change for you as soon as it becomes available.

ATI has taken this expertise that was aimed at business and gone online for the average traveler; they're looking for the people who check flights and make reservations for themselves because they know what they want. If you want to vacation somewhere you haven't been before or a place you don't know anything about, see a travel agent. However, if you are a small business or you just want to make your own reservations, and you don't want to hear all the travel agent's suggestions, then check out their site.

J.G.: Associated Travel Services holds Associated Travel International AQUA Software Products Incorporated. We do promote AQUA (Automated Quality User Assurance) on our site. We are the only site that does that. AQUA put ATI on the map about 10 years ago in the 80s. AQUA has a series of modules; probably the most noteworthy is Price Buster. After you book a ticket with us it will keep checking right up to the day of departure for a better fare for the itinerary.

J.G.: Yes. We are the only site that offers this feature. It does cost to run those modules so a lot of people don't want to give them away; we feel it's an added benefit that will pay for itself in the long run. AQUA was a big step for ATI; it's the only quality assurance software that is endorsed by SABRE, which is American Airlines CRS.

Most purchasers on the Web are purchasing well in advance. I'm not sure we would have expected this but we're finding they're not last-minute purchasers. They're taking advantage of 14-day advance purchase, or whatever it might be. The majority are actually single-traveler purchases. Everyone, up to whole families, is traveling, but a fair amount are booking their own tickets.

TravelBug is one of two sites that ATI operates. We're also doing an intranet right now. There are two sites: AssociatedTravel.com and TravelBug.com. AssociatedTravel.com is geared more for the corporate traveler; it's more informational about us. It does do some bookings and has a link for managed travel and so on. TravelBug.com is geared more toward the individual user.

J.G.: ATI is about the thirteenth biggest travel service in the U.S. We are somewhere over $400 million in bookings.

J.G.: The Web site was decided on in the fall of '95. That's when they first started talking about building it. It was originally built by an outside agency, but it has since come completely inside. By the spring of '96 we had several people on board. We had a Web master and several other people. After that it was brought in-house and launched in the fall of '96.

The feeling here is that the travel industry is undergoing a lot of change. Where it is going we don't know, but we know it is changing. We know the Web is going to play a part in that. We knew we needed a presence there. TravelBug was the original site. It has evolved to where we have the ATI site. We are still in a learning process. We're building the tools so that when the opportunities arise we will be well positioned to take advantage of them.

J.G.: The advantage is really convenience and access to information. In terms of what's the easiest thing to do? I would say call an agent today, to be honest with you. But if you are arranging travel at 1:00 a.m. Sunday night, you can't call an agent; you've got to go to the Web. For someone who is comfortable using the Web it is a great research tool and gives the person more control.

What we're finding is the people who are using the Web are what we call the "do-it-yourself travelers." They're people who historically wouldn't have called an agent anyway. They would have called destinations and suppliers and gotten their own information. They're more comfortable if they're in control of the booking.

The people who are not booking on the Web are the ones who are more traditional and would not have had the confidence to make their own arrangements.

J.G.: Maybe 5% of what we do. We don't see a lot of our existing business moving there right now.

J.G.: That's both corporate and retail. The 5% is of retail. Retail is the non-corporate user. On the corporate side it depends on what the managers really want to do. I would expect in the next five years that's where we'll see the most movement to online booking. The travel that is more suitable to booking on the Web is where somebody knows exactly where they are going: "I know this is my destination." It's not thinking about going to Rome or Hawaii where you have to counsel them. The Web is not conducive to that at this point in time.

If you have a meeting in Dallas, and you know the time and place, the Web is a good place to book the travel. The corporate world will build some sort of intranet or extranet for the corporate traveler. Build it in a way that corporate travel policy is enforced electronically on this thing, and what that may do is help the corporation from the standpoint of the corporate traveler now instead of going to an administrative assistant who goes to a travel agent whose line of communication back and forth is somewhat convoluted.

J.G.: We have 90% corporate.

J.G.: Physically, no. We are currently on a server at Network Intensive in South Orange County. Now we may eventually move it in-house; we've talked about that. Our biggest concern right now is-well, two concerns we have-we want to have lines coming into the building and we don't have enough bandwidth right now; we have to expand that. Probably the bigger concern is making sure we have the right fire walls.

J.G.: Not really. I mean it is a concern and we don't want to ignore it. There's not only the concern about unauthorized access to things, but the concern about fraudulent activities, so we have procedures in place for verification during the processing of tickets. At this point we have not had any breaches of security-not even any little ones. With off-site servers we are less likely to have a problem.

J.G.: We are actually at the second place we had it hosted. We focused on security and experience. It helps to have someone that's local because we need to communicate with them. The first place was picked by the company that helped design the site.

During the original contest launch in October we over-stressed our server. This was after we moved to our new server and we thought we were totally prepared for something but there were periods where we were receiving seven visitors per second. We didn't imagine that in our wildest dreams.

J.G.: By credit card is how a person buys a ticket right now. The person has two choices: they can enter their credit card number on a secure transaction server that is run out of northern California, or they can give their phone number and a person will call and take their card information over the phone. We have people do it both ways.

J.G.: ITN International Travel Network is the company. They're in Palo Alto. There are only two companies that handle booking transactions. It's an economy of scale thing. They have a lot of clients and can focus on providing a secure and reliable system.

J.G.: Five or six people, or three full-time equivalents, not counting the people at the provider.

J.G.: More than a lot of people expected. We get bookings every day. I can't give you the dollar amounts but it's consistent. We have not done many promotions. We have found that contests are a big driver to the site. Since we started in October we have had five or six contests in a row. It's amazing the correlation between contests and activity on the site.

J.G.: That's the hard part. I do not see a direct correlation to bookings; it may be a lagged correlation. I don't know.

J.G.: On the corporate side. They don't need as much advice; it's more transaction-based. I think there are a lot of efficiencies to be gained on their side and on our side. We are already starting to see the transition to online booking tools for the corporate traveler.

J.G.: We have booked travel in 41 states and the District of Columbia. It's pretty even but we have pockets based on advertising or stories. The visitors look like what everything you read says the demographics of the Web are.

Additional Travel Resources:

Air Travel

Aeroflot - Russian International Airlines (Right! I'll fly that one.)
Alaska Airlines & Horizon Air
America West Airlines
American Airlines
Delta Air Lines Home Page
Northwest Airlines
Welcome to RenoAir
Southwest Airlines
Skywest Airlines
TWA

Auto Routes

Auto Rentals

Avis Rent A Car
Hertz Rent A Car
Rent-A-Wreck of America

Where to Eat

Fun Places to Go and Find a Good Story

Welcome to RoadTrip America

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