Powerful Partnerships

Tusk would like to congratulate World Travel Professionals (WTP) on being awarded the 2009 BTTB Travel Supplier of the Year – Travel Management Services.The BTTB Travel Supplier of the Year is a prestigious National industry award, judged by the quality of submissions voted by corporate clients. World Travel Professionals were triumphant over some of the industry’s biggest players.

One of our first clients, Tusk partnered with World Travel Professionals in early 2004, and continued this relationship over the past 5 years developing and maintaining their award winning online solutions. A leader in their industry, WTP have a reputation for unparalleled corporate travel management services and technology solutions. They are also renowned for their strong supplier partnerships which helps deliver the highest quality of products and services to their clients at the best available airfares and rates. This central culture of service and relationships ultimately benefits their entire operation and has ensured their continued growth and prosperity, even in these trying financial times.

WTP’s vision is to simplify and streamline travel booking processes and create a seamless online travel environment for the management of corporate travel. No small feat considering the complexity of airfares and travel options available and the workflow required to meet many corporations travel policy and authorisation process. WTP’s Managing Director, Michael Chase-Smith, has spent considerable time understanding where technology could deliver improvements and efficiencies could be gained. Designing the requirements for specific systems and the overall web environment to be used by corporate clients has been the most important. In conjunction with Tusk’s Technical Director, Phil Rasmussen, many hours have been spent planning and strategising to ensure that the development and implementation is staged correctly and continues to grow and change with the industry and WTP’s direction.

The overall solution requires specific functionality and technology which enables it to integrate with corporate clients, the WTP travel consultants and numerous 3rd party systems.

This unique online solution provides the following key elements:

e-solutions Travel Portal – Customised Company Travel Portals

These travel portals are customsied web sites driven by an SQL database to provide WTP’s corporate clients and all their travelers with a centralised travel environment. It provides secure access to proprietary systems such as e-traveler and e-book, numerous third party systems including their online domestic booking system and stores important travel information and company travel documents.

e-traveler

Corporate Traveler Profile System. This system stores all the necessary information for a corporate traveler and is accessible 24/7 by the traveler; the companies travel booking staff and WTP’s consultants. e-traveler is integrated with other WTP systems and also automatically synchronises data with multiple 3rd party systems, such as the Amadeus Global Airline System and Tramada, the industry leading travel management and accounting system. This is handled via instantaneous XML data synchronisations, whenever data is updated in e-traveler and also via scheduled processes managed by the Content Management System (CMS). Most recently, WTP and Tusk worked closely with Amadeus to develop a real time traveler and company data syncronisation process between WTP e-traveler data, the Amadeus Online Booking System and the Amadeus HOST system used by WTP travel consultants. The traveler profile, preference and company travel policy information, automatically updates the other systems so the company’s travelers can easily book domestic travel online, and the WTP consultants can easily access all necessary information to complete the consultant assisted bookings. For example, if a traveler profile in the WTP system had a vegetarian meal, window seat, Avis Smartcar, and Sheraton Hotel stored against their profile, these options would all be prioritised during the online booking process or when the consultant is booking flights, hotels and car rental via Amadeus.

e-book

Online Booking Request and Approval System This system is unique in that it automates the booking request, quoting and approval process for consultant assisted bookings. Travel authorisation, particularly for International travel is a major priority for many organisations to ensure travel policy is followed and travel budgets are adhered to. In most organisations, the travel approval process is manual, time consuming and costly. In e-book, the booking request and approval process is managed electronically based on the travel policy setup for the company and through streamlining this process, the efficiencies gained can translate to significant savings on airfares and time.

Tusk CMS

Provides extensive functionality for the back-end management of data that drives e-book and e-traveler. It also provides configuration functionality for WTP’s public website. The Tusk CMS assists in the configuration and management of the travel reference data and specific company data. This data which is quite extensive, drives the behaviour of the e-solutions Travel Portals and e-book, includes the setup of company travel policies, traveler preferences, XML syncronisation settings and audit information, traveler profile security, corporate branding and colours, corporate Travel Portal menu options and security settings. The functionality it provides is a great example of the flexibility and robustness of Tusk CMS, which is the core software used across 90% of our website development.

The result of these four core components is WTP’s ability to deliver consistent processes and streamlined operations that minimise risk and error. The automatic synchronisation of data from WTP’s integrated systems to other systems, ensure corporate clients are given control over their data and profile information. The technical measures allow for greater WTP team productivity and additional services to be accessed by clients. In keeping with their company culture, this management system forms a significant component of what sets World Travel Professional’s apart from their competitors, adding unequalled value to their partnerships.

With the vision of providing a completely integrated, online corporate travel solution, WTP is continuing to develop additional functionality to ensure a superior end to end corporate travel service model. Having partnered with WTP through all stages of development Tusk are delighted to showcase this system which is ahead of its time and will ensure the facilitation of future growth for this outstanding company. We look forward to continuing our partnership into the future.

Visit the website at www.worldtravel.com.au