A couple of Tnooz posts about Microsoft Surface have me reaching for the reality-check button.
The reason? Most travel agents, in the U.S. at least, still prefer to use DOS-like linear commands and time-worn scripts on their green-screen desktops (the screen on Sabre’s actually is blue, I believe) as their preferred user interface. GUIs? Nah, too inefficient.
So, TravelTainment is constructing a Microsoft Surface application for travel agents, and Sheraton apparently has one of the best Microsoft Surface applications in any vertical.
At some of Sheraton’s U.S.  locations, including the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers and the Sheraton Boston Hotel, guests apparently can run their fingertips along those cool-looking Surface tables and book restaurants and map their car routes.
Great stuff and I’d bet that many folks would swap the ping-pong table in the basement for one of those Microsoft Surface tables any day.
Microsoft Surface could and will (I hope) transform the way consumers shop for travel.
We’re already seeing so much visual stuff in travel.
Bing recently launched visual search for destinations and Priceline this week introduced Hotel Price Maps as a visual way to make Name-Your-Own Price bidding less opaque.
Meanwhile, ASTA’s Director of Research Melissa Teates says green-screen usage has not been a question on the organization’s recent travel agency technology surveys, but she believes that a majority of U.S. agents still use green screens as their preferred user interface.
There are plenty of GUI desktops out there in GDS land and many travel agents are hip to social media and new technologies.
But, as the emergence of Microsoft Surface symbolizes, the travel agency community increasingly is becoming a world of technology haves and technology have nots.
And, financial questions aren’t always the primary driver in this regard.
Some agents embrace new ways of doing things, and some just don’t.
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We’ve seen the green screen, at least in airports and reservations centres at the airlines, diminish severely, but it’s a sliding scale across airlines and functions.
What tends to happen is that the GUI is moved to the ‘front’ of the call centre, where it can deal with 80% of the queries pretty efficiently, as well as being easy to train people on.
Whilst at the ‘back’ of the call centre, remain a hardcore of operators who understand the command line interface which is ultimately a lot more powerful and flexible – if you know what you’re doing of course.
Some of the airlines have GUI at the check-in desk and some haven’t. Lufthansa Systems for example have a check in app that is used by people like BMI. In that context, the green screen is reserved for re-seating passengers or complex stuff – by agents who have the relevant experience.
There are a few industry areas where the old fashioned way of doing things persists despite our knowledge and technology moving on; Share trading, data visualisation for engineers, and travel. I’ve sat with people in all these areas and told them we can make things better – but at the end of the day, they’ve spent years honing their understanding of a particular screen and anything else is going to be inferior.
Until we start new recruits off on new systems that are actually better and don’t require anyone to ‘unlearn’ anything, things will stay mostly the same.
We can definitely do things better, especially when you consider the move to gesture technology, but I’m not sure the current breed of agents and operators are ready for it yet….
I love using the green screens! So much more stable than their more GUI focused cousins.
If the surface table is as stable and slow as most Windows based systems… we could have an issue.
Liking green screens and linear DOS commands (as in GDS) does not mean that we do not like new technology, if it’s all the same to you. GAL tried a windows style pointy pointy type screen as did most other GDS’s ages ago. Indeed, the Amadeus log on takes one, irritatingly, to the point n’ click screen rather than the “command” screen. Some facets are easier with pointy screens (eg refunds) but on balance, for GDS, command lines are faster and much more efficient. In any event, the GDS came about – what – late 80′s? And no-one has ever invented a more clever piece of technology for travel yet. It did it’s job now as it did it then – what’s the point of changing something that is reliable, works and everyone that needs to know, know’s what they are doing. Just because these techy types think its a bit old hat presentation-wise, does not mean it has to be changed. It is one piece of travel technology that we would be very grateful if one just left alone, thank you.
Anyway, ruddy cheek “current breed of agents… are ready for it. Prententious ruddy, er… something…