The Impact of the Airline Online Booking

1. Introduction: 

Technology has become one of the most important elements in our life, there are many types and uses of it, and one of the uses is electronic booking, the aim of this research is to investigate the effects of the online booking system, how does it begin along with the advantages and disadvantages of the system. The airline company racing to develop the methods of purchasing tickets, not only to make our life easy but also to increase the sales of the tickets through creating value for their customers.

Instead of the old method, you don’t have to be present to book your ticket, you can do it anywhere and everywhere through your computers or tablets or even your smartphones by using GDS (Global Distributing System). In the mid of 1990s and early of 2000s with the begging of the Internet revelation the idea of online booking was created. The starting point was from the Hotels booking through the call center that devolved with time to become online booking hotels; the American airline took the advantage to become the first Airline that allows the customer to buy their ticket over the internet by creating the airline online booking, and one of the companies is Gulf Air. Which system did they use? What are the advantages and disadvantages? How the system does help the company? How does this system effective people? Gulf air, since initiation in 1949 as a Joint ownership between the governments of Bahrain, Oman, Abu Dhabi, and Qatar, they have strived for constant development and enhancement to meet the consistently changing business sector request. Indeed, there advancement from a from a joint venture to a private company in Bahrain formula one and continues supporting the race until 2010. They will persist to be well recognized as a company specializing in aviation company by embracing new technologies and production methodologies to enhance productivity and competitiveness while maintaining the highest levels of Health, Safety, Environment and Quality standards through teamwork and continuous improvement. 

2. Literature review: 

2.1 Which system they use.

The type of the system used in Gulf air is ANS-The booking system currently in use is Interact V8.2. Interact is a GDS system developed by Sabre Airline Tech and is in use by various other airlines.

2.2 Information about Global distribution system. 

The premier global distribution systems are Amadeus, Galileo, Sabre, and World span. A Global distribution system (GDS) is a system of ownership or management of the company, the company deals with airlines, hotel and some other company such as car rental companies, the GDS mainly uses real-time inventory. Also called automated reservation system (ARS) or computerized reservation system (CRS). The GDS is different from a computer reservations system, a system that manages people who work for the company and provide service to the customer, whether on the internet or in office, the inventory is held on the vendor’s reservation system itself. A GDS system will have a real-time link to the vendor’s database. 

2.3 The obstacle. 

At the beginning when the company uses the system he was exposed of obstacle and it is ANS-The user must get used to the process that needs to be followed to achieve each task. For a new user, these elaborate processes can be very time consuming and difficult to memories. 

2.4 Advantage and disadvantage of the system. 

The system (GDS) does not impact on company or users. But everything in the world has an advantage, which is: 

• Time-saving. 
  Most people who use the booking through the website are the businessmen. Therefore, they do not like to waste their time going to the company and wait a long time for booking. The website is open 24 hours.
• Quick payment.
  With a web-based booking framework, you can expect clients to prepay for exercises and rentals. This places cash into your pocket quicker and helps ensure that upon the arrival of the occasion you don’t need to stress over installment — giving you and your clients more opportunity to have a ton of fun.
• Easy to manage your calendar.
  The website shows the aircraft or flights available. A long-term schedule can be worked out. Like we have advantages we also have a disadvantage, and which is: 
  • The payment process is unsafe. 
    Some people they think that when they will pay online the company, or the employee will take the password and steal the money. Also, some people do not trust the website.
  • The online booking needs a strong internet. 
    The internet is not available everywhere or the necessary power is not available sometimes, also when they pay or when they book some time happened things cut the connecting with the internet the customers, they don’t know it is ok or not and sometimes make a new book.
  • Costing issue.
    When booking online you cannot get offers or discount but if you go to the travel office you will get special and suitable prices. 

3. Methodology: 

The Interview was done via email, to save time and to have the accurate answers for our question about the system. They respond was very fast and satisfied, some of our questions not been answered maybe for security reasons. There was a quantitative research has been used, a survey was distributed through the social media. A sample of 71 random questionnaires of different ages and education levels had done this questionnaire, most of them were female, the age group 18-24 was 29 questionnaires and most of them were Employees and they were asked about how was their experiences with the online booking. 

4. Findings and Discussion: 

The study classified according to: 

4.1 Personal information

Almost 70% of the questionnaires are females and the other 30% were men, 40% represent the 18-24 years age group, then comes the 20 questionnaires the second group 25-34 followed by the over two groups 35-48 along with 48 + for 15% for each one of them. Most of them are Employee and student, on the other hand, the unemployed and the self-employed are 15 compounds. 

4.2 Have you booked a ticket from the online site?

The system helped the company to get to the customer, the company unable to reach to the customer without the system besides that the system is very easy to use, and the above figure indicates that majority of the questionnaires tried, experienced and been through the process of the online booking. 

4.3 How did you find online booking?

One of the advantages of the system that is not a complicated one and it very easy to use, as the Figure shows that 44% of the surveyed sample said that the process on the website is easy, 17% they didn’t use the website, also 5% they said it is so hard and difficult, 3% couldn’t pay and it is one of the problems, that indicates two things, the first one is that people feel that is very easy to book online because of the technology awareness, education, and knowledge. On the other hand, how felt is difficult to book online are the older how has the lack of technology awareness and less use of the internet. 

4.4 Employment

The chart in figure 4 shows how the system affects the people and how they made their life easier by saving time and effort. The surveyed said that the people who use the site are 26% are student, the other 30% are employers how does not need to leave their jobs to buy a ticket, 15% are unemployed and 5% said that they are self-employed, this indicates that most of the users of the site are employers those how truly benefits from this site, then comes the students who have better technology awareness than others. 

4.5 How was the payment process

In the other hand, the disadvantage of the online booking system is the payment process, still, there are many people who afraid to pay through any kind of online payment they might not feel comfortable to share their credit card information. As is shown above in figure the majority do trust in payment method but still, there are few who don’t. 

5. Conclusion:

The online booking left a remarkable impact on our life and society, by making the airline booking much easier than before helping the employees to pay their tickets even if they were at work. Our survey shows that most of the online booking were employees. As we mention before our project talks about online booking and we come across the Gulf air experience in this matter, they use the (GDS – Interact V8.2) the system save time for the users through providing Quick payment in the other hand they may face some trouble with payment process, they may need a strong internet, as for the airline company it may be costly. The system provides a platform for the customer to buy tickets. 

6. Recommendation:

The airline companies should increase the social awareness about online booking, in the upcoming years our life’s will be more repayable on the technology and the Internet it may case that the airline companies may shift completely to the online booking instead of the traditional branches that will reduce the number of employees and generate more profit. To do such a big change like this you have to be will prepare spicily in the internet security level to gain the customer trust and protect the customer along with the airline company. 

References: 

1. Kenneth and Jane Laudon, Management information system book , managing the digital firm, fourteenth edition. 
2. Jainchill, Johanna. ‘Lufthansa to add surcharge for GDS bookings’. Travel weekly. Retrieved 13 June2015. 
3. ‘Buying ticket from airline website cheaper than travel agency’. Emiratis 24/7. Reuters Retrieved 13 June 2015.

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