The travel industry is very much non-standardised,' Swainston says. Many of our partners have proprietary systems. In many cases we have to ask customers to pick up the phone for bookings,' he says. As a result, the Web site carries phone numbers for call centres to make bookings. Swainston says that ICL, Thomas Cook and a number of other large holiday operators are now developing open standards in order to improve interoperability and incre-ase automation.
Legacy systems are the only barrier to online booking.
Everybody is looking for a messaging system that will link in the back-end systems,' Swainston explains. An added feature of the Thomas Cook service is the availability of information via WAP phones. James says that WAP had been seen just as an extra service for customers, but had led to more people booking flights. Swainston says the agreement with ICL stipulates 99.98 percent reliability, 'but we are working towards making the system completely resilient' . Looking ahead, Thomas Cook plans further improvements.