Exclusive: TravelTainment to develop new fulfilment tool for tour operators

Technology provider TravelTainment has taken a team of developers from BlueSky Travel Systems to develop new fulfilment tools for tour operators.

Technology provider TravelTainment has taken a team of developers from BlueSky Travel Systems to develop new fulfilment tools for tour operators.Based in Manchester, the new subsidiary, TravelTainment’s second UK office, is headed up by Tom Steele, former BlueSky technical director.BlueSky had been developing Thomas Cook’s Globe tour operating reservations system but went out of business after Cook ended the contract last October.TravelTainment’s new “XTour” system, that the former BlueSky team is developing, will allow fulfilment outside of tour operators’ own systems, speeding up the selling process. Once new modules that will provide system support for booking fulfilment processing have been added then inventory management and packaging modules will be added. All modules are multilingual and will be available across multi-markets with functionality specific to each market sector. The initial launch will be in France during the second quarter 2010 and will then roll out to the UK soon after.As well as Steele the Manchester team includes former BlueSky employees Jane Parkinson, who has over 20 years business analysis experience in travel, and James Lorimer, who specialises in application design across a range of travel businesses. TravelTainment chief executive Andy Owen-Jones, said: “This new team and its specific know-how will enable us to meet our customers’ requirements regarding dynamic packaging solutions in a decisive way. “We are planning essential additional solutions for all our markets with extensive additional value for our customers.” Steele added: “TravelTainment is already well known for its world-class IBE and Dynamic Packaging technology. “The new teams focus is to extend the company’s product portfolio by providing full business cycle support for our customers.”