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CAMBRIDGE, MA. -- August 3, 1998 -- GTE Internetworking (GTEI),
through an alliance with Automated Travel Systems (ATS), announced
today its first customer Omega World Travel for a trial of TravelXpress,
a speech recognition system that automates the planning and booking of
airline travel. Omega's new service will make the travel planning process
faster, easier, and more convenient for business travelers and travel
arrangers.
TravelXpress merges innovative speech recognition technology from GTEI
with ATS's ResFax software to create an innovative and cost-effective
solution to the time consuming problem of trip planning. Using any
phone at any time, day or night, travelers can request information about
airline flights and fares to and from their destination. Just a few minutes
later, they receive a fax of available flight options with applicable fares for
the itinerary, including the lowest fare or corporate negotiated fare. The
traveler can also use TravelXpress to request his or her desired flights by
referencing information contained on the fax form, through a
call-back-to-book feature.
"This collaborative effort is another significant step by GTE
Internetworking to provide speech enabled systems that create business
value. " said Terry Sullo, Business Development Manager, Travel at GTE
Internetworking. "As a true market leader, we continue to create
speech-based solutions that are very intuitive and natural to use for a
wide range of purposes."
Travelers and travel arrangers benefit from easy access to a display of
flight information, the capability to request several itineraries in a single
call and the ability to make routine reservations quickly. Travel agencies
benefit by never missing a single customer call and by dramatically
cutting the cost of handling flight information requests, particularly during
the travel agency's peak calling times or during non-business hours.
"This solution offsets the cost to travel agencies in handling information
calls by live agents which is a great benefit " said Dan Bohan, chief
operating officer at Omega World Travel. "We estimate that we can save
anywhere from 40-60% in staffing and related costs by using a system
with speech recognition capability."
"GTE Internetworking's BBN Hark Recognition technology integrated
quickly with ResFax which made it very easy for us to enhance our
existing fax back and reservation system with a powerful front end." said
Paul Hoffmann, Vice President Sales and Industry Relations, Automated
Travel Systems.
GTE Internetworking and ATS are offering the TravelXpress Service
primarily to travel agencies for deployment to their corporate customers.
This service is priced at a competitive transaction fee per call with no
minimum volume requirement. For travel agencies or corporate travel
departments that prefer to "private label" the product as a custom
solution, there is a nominal, one-time set-up fee.
TravelXpress can be deployed without purchasing hardware or software
because the product is delivered by GTE Internetworking on a service
bureau basis, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week through GTE
Internetworking's Web Hosting Operation Center. The only requirement
needed to use the systems is a user identification number provided in
advance by GTE Internetworking.
About GTE Internetworking
GTE Internetworking, a unit of GTE Corporation (NYSE:GTE), includes
the former BBN Corporation, which 29 years ago developed the
ARPANET, the forerunner to today's Internet, and GTE Intelligent
Network Services, which provides Internet services to consumers and
small businesses. For over twenty-five years, the speech and language
group at GTE Internetworking has advanced the state of the art in
recognition accuracy and robustness, and applied existing technology to
government and business applications through its applied research. In
addition to its research efforts, the group has successfully integrated the
technological core of GTE Internetworking's speech solutions offering,
BBN Hark Recognizer, into a range of applications, products and
services. The group offers government and commercial customers a
range of services, including basic and applied research, consulting,
systems integration, and custom system development. More information
on GTE Internetworking and its speech solutions can be found at
www.bbn.com.
About ATS
Automated Travel Systems (ATS) is the leading provider of software
solutions for the travel industry providing a myriad of technology
solutions, which emphasize productivity and increased efficiency. By
automating a significant number of agent functions as they relate to the
providing of reservations flight options, PNR creation, communication and
Quality Assurance, Automated Travel Systems provides an unparalleled
resource in today's industry. More information on ATS can be found at
www.travelsys.com.
About Omega World Travel
Omega world Travel is wholly-owned by Gloria and Daniel Bohan and has
been a leader in providing professional travel services to the corporate
and government community for the past 26 years. For the last two
decades, we have provided innovative strategies and solutions to help our
clients better manage their travel programs. For example, we were one of
the first travel agencies to offer on-site service, free ticket delivery to
business accounts, an absolute low-fare guarantee, and our 24-hour 800
number.
Omega has grown from a small travel agency of $2 million in sales in
1978 to an agency with $600 million in sales today. Today, Omega is
the 10th largest travel company in the United States, and the largest
woman-owned travel agency in the world. This growth was primarily
accomplished internally without the benefit of external purchase.
BBN HARK Recognizer is a trademark of GTE Internetworking.
