CONTOUR Lets the world’s leading luxuray tour company focus on its customers - Not Technology

It is often said in the leisure travel industry that no two tour operators are the same. True or not, there is certainly no tour company quite like Abercrombie & Kent. From its beginnings nearly half a century ago as a safari operator in Kenya, A&K has become the leading name in luxury escorted, custom and active travel programs that span the globe from Europe and the Americas to Africa, the Middle East, Asia and beyond.

By 2000 A&K was flush with the rewards – and challenges – of its own success: a growing high-end travel market, an increasingly sophisticated product portfolio touching every corner of the globe, and a more demanding and well traveled clientele. To meet these challenges A&K sought a new technology solution to integrate its expanding operations, improve efficiencies and enhance productivity. And it found one in Fourth Dimension Software and CONTOUR®, the leading tour management and distribution solution.

As a provider of distinctive travel experiences, A&K is not like most tour operators, whose success depends on selling large volumes of low-cost packages. A&K deals with fewer customers, relatively small amounts of inventory, yet very intricate reservations. With a limited ability to manage inventory and customer details, the company’s aging reservations system was forcing staff to complete numerous booking steps manually, such as attaching hand-written notes to reservations or phoning other offices to check availability. Furthermore, every booking confirmation by fax or phone to a vendor or one of the company’s 45 field offices, every document produced for a customer, including tickets, to vouchers and more, required manual ntervention by staff.

CONTOUR immediately delivered significant efficiency gains in three key areas of automation:

• Centralized Inventory Management
• Automated Documentation Production
• Automated Vendor Advising

How so? With centralized inventory control, any reservations agent could immediately see what inventory was available at the component level. And with automated reservations processing, CONTOUR handles each step, such as vendor advising via email or fax of booking details and customer document production. For A&K staff, this means much less time on the phone or fax with vendors and field offices, and more time on the phone with customers.

Running a travel business today without the right technology can be like traveling into unchartered terrain without an experienced guide. You may make it through, but the journey will likely be pretty uncomfortable (never mind luxurious). The travel business has indeed been a bumpy ride for many companies over the last few years. As the economy sputtered and the demand for travel slowed, however, A&K’s more efficient operations helped the firm weather the storm. And CONTOUR has provided A&K a new level of awareness and control over its operations, allowing the firm to improve inventory utilization and maximize load factors on departures. A&K has before it a grand itinerary that will no doubt be filled with new challenges and opportunities. This esteemed, half-century-old firm is well poised to succeed, for it has embraced an essential strategy in a challenging and changing travel environment: powerful technology is one luxury that successful companies cannot do without.