How did travel agents book flights and hotel rooms...

Max largo

Before the internet excisted ?

oppenheimer1

Fax.







(probably)

Gran Hermano

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_CRS

Redzer7

Message boys.

Satts

Carrier Pigeon.

NilByMouth

Redzer7 wrote: »

Message boys.

you sure?I thought it was pigeons

MickySticks

Smoke signals

Redzer7

Genie in a bottle... oh I mean message in a bottle, **** it through the window!

Thoie

Things like hotels were often done by phone - you still get some travel agents ringing hotels asking for the agent's rates. Say if a room was €100, agent rate might be €90. Agent pays the hotel €90, guest pays the agent €100, agent keeps the difference.

Airlines used have call centres, but they were for travel agents to phone into - you had to have a travel agent identifier in order to book a flight. So a travel agent would phone airline x, give their identifier, and book the flight for the passenger. The airline would bill the travel agency directly, and the passenger would pay the agency. When travel agents were given the flight confirmation/ticket number details, they'd hand write (or type, if they were posh) the passenger information on the ticket (in triplicate), keep one piece, and give the rest to the customer in a little folder.

Travel agencies used have big books of flight schedules and all sorts of things. If you were taking a more complicated trip, you'd call into the travel agent office, tell them all the things you wanted, then they'd go off, look up a few alternatives and get back to you a day or so later with prices and options.

They used book things like ferries as well. Not many people had credit cards, so dropping into the travel agency was necessary to pay them (and they'd work out payment with the providers). Typically you'd pay a deposit of some kind when booking, then the bulk about 6 weeks before travel, and sometimes a final sum close to the date of travel.

This hangs over a little still today - sometimes you'll see things like "x % up front, or full balance if date of travel is less than 6 weeks".

The introduction of systems such as Galileo and Sabre meant that agents could search a variety of flight information and prices without having to phone various places. Most of those systems were initially all command line based, with their own "language". These aren't accurate, but an agent might type in something like 20120421DUBLHR1PSRSS which could return the available flight times and prices for 1 person with a special requirement travelling on a seaman's fare on April 21st 2012.

Airlines used have special fares for people like sailors, military personnel and all kinds of different "classes" of people. The special fares are mostly long gone though

With the introduction of the CRSs, bigger agents could become authorised ticketers - they'd have special ticket printing machines, and would receive batches of blank tickets. The airlines would send a "message" to the ticket machine at a set time each night, and a batch of tickets would print off for "their" customers - to be sorted and enveloped the next day.

That is probably far more information than you really wanted, isn't it? :pac:

Ghandee

:rolleyes:

El Weirdo

Thoie wrote: »

Things like hotels were often done by phone...

...That is probably far more information than you really wanted, isn't it? :pac:

/muthafucking thread