Abacus, Amadeus and OPERA Airline Reservation Systems

Abacus, Amadeus, and OPERA Reservation Systems (ORS) are the three IT systems that will be discuss in this report.

Abacus is the Asia Pacific’s largest Global Distribution System (GDS) and Computerized Reservations System (CRS) that provides airline reservations, pricing and ticketing, hotel and car bookings, travel insurance and other travel information. One of the travel agency which is using Abacus is Eurotours & Travel Pte Ltd in Singapore.

Amadeus is a Central Reservations System (CRS) which created by Air France, Iberia Airlines, Lufthansa, and Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) in 1987. AirAsia is one of the airline partner which is using Amadeus as their IT system.

The OPERA Reservation System (ORS) is the industry’s first truly integrated, single image enterprise inventory system. ORS is owned by MICROS Systems, Inc. Loews Hotels has chosen ORS to be their IT systems in all their hotels.

These three different IT systems have its different advantages and disadvantages.

Last but not least, IT systems are very important in tourism and hospitality industry. They play a lot of roles in industry in order to provide more convenience for the companies as well as the customers.

Introduction

Information Technology (IT) systems play an important role in tourism and hospitality industry. There are many IT systems appear in the market now for hotels, restaurants, travel agencies, and airlines. Some of the IT systems are Abacus, Amadeus, Gabriel, Fidelio, OPERA Reservation System, Sabre, Worldspan, and many others. These IT systems are created to make reservations, check seat availabilities, food and beverage transactions and controls in hotels, restaurants, airlines, as well as travel agencies around the world.

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Abacus, Amadeus, and OPERA Reservation Systems are the three IT systems that will be discuss in this report. Abacus is the Asia Pacific’s largest Global Distribution System (GDS) used in travel agencies. Amadeus is a Central Reservations System (CRS) which majority used in airlines while the OPERA Reservation System used in most hotels in the world.

This report is written and compound to evaluate and analyze how Abacus, Amadeus, and OPERA Reservation System are implemented in three different companies.

Abacus International is the Asia Pacific’s largest Global Distribution System (GDS) and Computerized Reservations System (CRS) that provides airline reservations, pricing and ticketing, hotel and car bookings, travel insurance and other travel information since 1988. The headquarter of Abacus International is located in Singapore.

Abacus International is 65 percent owned by Abacus International Holdings and 35 percent owned by U.S. Based GDS, Sabre Holdings. Sabre is the global leader in the electronic distribution of travel and travel related services.

Abacus International Holdings is jointly owned by several Asia’s leading airlines including All Nippon Airways, Cathay Pacific, Garuda Indonesia, EVA Airways, China Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, Hong Kong Dragon Airlines, Royal Brunei Airlines, Philippine Airlines, SilkAir and Singapore Airlines.

Abacus is typically used in travel agencies and one of the travel agency which uses Abacus as their reservation system is:

Eurotours & Travel Pte Ltd

Eurotours & Travel Pte Ltd was established by Ms. Hedy Mok in 1974. Eurotours & Travel is located at 190 Clemenceau Avenue #05-4/7, Singapore Shopping Centre, Singapore 239924. Eurotours & Travel provides inbound and outbound travel management services. Currently, Corporate Travel bookings comprise 80 percent of Eurotours’ business volume and the remaining 20 percent is from Leisure Travel services.

Every system must have the strengths and the weaknesses in different area. The strengths of Abacus are Abacus has direct link for travel agencies who want to apply Australia visa for their customers. It is more convenience for the travel agencies who use Abacus so they do not to go to Australia embassy to queue for applying visa for their customers who wish to travel to Australia.

Abacus also provides a lot of information about all requirements that travel agencies need to know for their customers who want to travel to certain country.

Some weaknesses of Abacus are the operation of Abacus and the update information in Abacus. The operation of Abacus is not user friendly. For travel agencies who operate Abacus system, they need to give advance training to their employees because Abacus uses a lot of codes in their system. The employees need to learn and memorize hundreds of code in order to make a reservation or check the room availability in a hotel. Abacus also a bit slow in update their new data or information so travel agencies always need to check their new information.

Amadeus is a Central Reservations System (CRS) which created by Air France, Iberia Airlines, Lufthansa, and Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) in 1987. Amadeus is owned by Amadeus IT Group. The central headquarters of Amadeus are located in Madrid, Spain for its corporate headquarters and marketing, Nice for the development and Erding for the operation.

Amadeus is also a member of International Air Transport Association (IATA), OpenTravel Alliance (OTA), and SITA, and its IATA designator code is 1A.

One of the airline which applies Amadeus as their IT system is:

Air Asia

According to Press Release from Amadeus North America, Inc. (2010) stated:

“Madrid, Spain, September 10, 2009: Amadeus, a global leader in technology and distribution solutions for the travel and tourism industry today, announced that it hasformed a groundbreaking partnership with AirAsia, the World’s Best Low Cost Airline, which for the first time will enable Amadeus-subscribing travel agencies worldwide to book AirAsia flights in the same way they would for a full-service carrier.”

AirAsia is a Malaysian low-cost airline. AirAsia was established in 1993 and commenced operations on 18 November 1996. AirAsia have five subsidiaries which are Thai AirAsia, Indonesia AirAsia, VietJet AirAsia, AirAsia RedTix, and Khmer AirAsia (2012). AirAsia Group operates over 400 flights daily, both domestic and international routes, from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, India, Myanmar, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, South Korea, Laos, Philippines, and United Kingdom. Currently, AirAsia has total 96 fleets including Thai AirAsia, Indonesia AirAsia, and AirAsia X.

Amadeus provides Customer Service Management (CMS) for airlines, sales, reservations, and e-ticketing systems, and corporate self-booking tools for major world leading airlines and travel suppliers. Amadeus also offers services for trains, cars, cruises, and hotel reservations.

There are many benefits for the airlines which using Amadeus. The system of Amadeus is quite fast and efficient. Amadeus also allows the airlines to change their existing bookings or request new time limits. Lastly, Amadeus also will send automatic recognition or acknowledgement to their partner airlines once all the updates are finished.

The OPERA Reservation System (ORS) is the industry’s first truly integrated, single image enterprise inventory system. OPERA Reservation System is owned by MICROS Systems, Inc. The headquarter of MICROS Systems, Inc. is located in Columbia, Maryland. The ORS hotel reservation system is designed with the entire OPERA product family: OPERA Customer Information System (OCIS), OPERA Property Management System, OPERA Sales and Catering, and OPERA Sales Force Automation.

ORS can be configured to suit any size hotel or Central Reservation Office (CRO) environment. ORS handles all types of reservations started from individual, group and party, company, travel agent, multi-legged, multi-rate, as well as waitlisted.

ORS is typically used in the hotels especially front office and one of the hotel which uses ORS as their IT system is:

Loews Hotels

Loews Hotels headquartered in New York City, offer a comfortable, vibrant, and unique local experience for their guests. Loews Hotels is a wholly owned by Loews Corporation. Loews Hotels operates 19 distinctive luxury hotels and resorts across US and Canada started from: Annapolis, Los Angeles, Lake Las Vegas, Montreal, Quebec City, Miami Beach, Nashville, New York, New Orleans, Philadelphia, San Diego, Tucson, Washington DC, St. Pete Beach, Portofino Bay, Hard Rock Hotel, and Royal Pacific Resort.

The ORS availability display will help the front office officer to check the room rates, types of room, and packages that hotel offer to their guests. ORS also helps hotels to do the complex operations such as frequent flyer and loyalty program memberships, split charges, and rate discounts.

ORS also handles group and block reservations in hotel easier than other systems, for example: room blocking, room sharing, rooming lists, tour series, and deposits.

Last but not least, hotels and chains can also use the ORS to review their business volume and performance by either open or close channel. Open or close channel can be based on property rate or the room type.

Conclusion

Nowadays, hotels, airlines, restaurants, and travel agencies use Information Technology (IT) systems in their companies to facilitate the companies as well as their customers in terms of making reservations, checking the seat availabilities, purchasing airline tickets, and many others.

Abacus, Amadeus, and OPERA Reservation System (ORS) is the three IT systems which have discussed in this report. Abacus is the IT systems which used in majority travel agencies, while Amadeus and ORS used in majority airlines and hotels. These three different IT systems have its different advantages and disadvantages.

Last but not least, IT systems are very important in tourism and hospitality industry. They play a lot of roles in industry in order to provide more convenience for the companies and their customers.