Mobile solution caters to travel agents on the move


24 Nov 2010

A new solution called Abacus Mobile allows travel agents to provide professional service to their customers from their mobile phones.

Abacus International has partnered with Dublin-based Mobile Travel Technologies (MTT) to bring global distribution system (GDS) services to mobile phones for travel agencies.

MTT acknowledged that while some of the largest travel agencies offer 24-hour call centres, most do not. As such, agents who are out of the office cannot compete.

As a result, Abacus Mobile lets travel agents make and modify books and clear waitlists anytime.

“There’s an increasing demand for mobile services from travellers, but there’s no reason for mobile travel services to be limited to the B2C (business to consumer) market,” said Gerry Samuels, founder and executive director, MTT.

“Abacus Mobile was designed to give agents access to professional travel agency GDS services via mobile. It’s like having an agency call centre in your pocket,” said Samuels.

MTT has said Abacus Mobile is available to travel agents on “virtually all mobiles,” such as iPhone, RIM, Android and Symbian.

It has been designed to emulate the “green screen” style of the Abacus Point of Sale system, letting agents enter standard text string commands and inset system specific symbols like ChangeKey and EndItem from a drop-down menu.

It’s powered by MTT’s mobile travel platform, M2B, which powers mobile apps and web, and is optimised for all devices from one platform.