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Agents offered no-frills bolt-on
Dolphin Dynamics’ FlightScanner faces competition from a no-frills bolt-on that is being targeted at agents.
DATAFLEXnet is going ahead with the launch of it’s no-frills search engine, www.checknofrills.com on Wednesday. The company has decided to launch the stand alone product as an alternative to the full TravelServe XML offering.
DATAFLEXnet managing director, Reza Satongar told TravelMole: “The product is mainly geared to agents. But it can be bolted onto a website as a white label product, so agents can choose if they want to sell it to their client as a one off service. It means agents might not get the booking but it is something else for them to sell.
“Agents are our bread and butter. We are looking at making their lives easier with technology. It can be a real turning point for agents, and if they don’t embrace technology, they probably won’t make it.”
Checknofrills.com screen-scrapes the websites of the following carriers: EasyJet, BMIBaby, RyanAir, MyTravelLite, Volare, Basiq Air, Hapag-Lloyd Express, Virgin Express, Air 2000, and German Wings. Mr Satongar said DATAFLEXnet is still hoping to develop XML links with some of the carriers to avoid screen scraping.
The product is similar to Dolphin Dynamics’ FlightScanner, which recently announced it had integrated nine more airlines into the FlightScanner
engine, bringing it to a total of 28 carriers.
Commenting on the launch of checknofrills.com, Dolphin president, Roberto da Re told TravelMole: “It is inevitable that others will try and do what we are doing, but I guess we have a head start and we will try and maintain this lead. The key is how many carriers the engine searches, and what sort of data capture is offered.”
Mr Satongar told TravelMole that DATAFLEXnet was in talks with Qjump to get rail on TravelServeXML, and would also be looking to including hotels in the future, enabling the company to offer a complete GDS alternative.
DATAFLEXnet is offering a free trail of the no-frills add-on if you click on the link, www.checknofrills.com/freetrial.
Read our previous stories:
17-June-2003 TravelServe signs up fourth GDS
22-May-2003 TravelServe sizes up to GDSs
01-May-2003 No-frills added to TravelServe search engine
7-Jan-2003 Agents offered free net fare solution
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