Press Releases: Thomas Cook gives stamp of approval for itour in a £20m contract award.

UK market leading tour operator solution specialist BlueSky Travel Systems has won a multi-million pound contract to develop and implement a new modern multi channel reservation system for Thomas Cook.

The system, which will be enhanced over the next three years, will enable Thomas Cook to distribute traditional package holidays, dynamically packaged and priced holidays and trips made up of individual components.  The solution will allow any combination of Thomas Cook owned inventory and third party inventory via links to external systems. It will also enable all of the group’s tour operating brands to sell and distribute via multiple channels including websites, television, call-centres and travel agents.

Manchester-based BlueSky saw off stiff competition from traditional system suppliers during an intense evaluation process to secure the £20m contract.

Critical to winning the contract was the existence of BlueSky’s successful Oracle based reservation system itour and the high degree of functionality it currently delivers to customers. The innovative system design of itour was also vitally important to Thomas Cook because it is flexible enough to enable enhancements in accordance with today’s trends across different geographic markets.

itour’s unique inventory search performance was also an important factor in BlueSky being awarded the contract. During trials, the technology specialist was able to deliver results far in excess of the Thomas Cook benchmark requirement.

The development and introduction of the reservation system, which has been given the code name GLOBE, will be phased in brand by brand over the next three years.

BlueSky managing director Stephen Driscoll said: “Winning this contract is the culmination of our vision to create a ‘new world’ tour operator reservation system to support both new and existing business models. Thomas Cook has recognised the superiority of our technology and its flexibility enabling them to take their business to the next generation.”

Thomas Cook AG Chief Information Officer Reinhard Eschbach: “BlueSky offers a pioneering core system that will meet and exceed the challenges of the future. Consumer demand dictates we must offer new types of holidays, product and services in an efficient manner and the only way to do that was to develop a new pan European reservation system.”

He continues: “The new solution will enable us to align our production processes more closely to our customers' evolving booking behaviour and allow us to distribute our product how and where we want to and through as many channels as we choose.”