GDS Apollo Worldspan Sabre Galileo Travel industrystry Airline industry Testing Quality

1. Providing Quality for Travel Solutions
Importance of Quality in Travel Industry
Version: 1
Prepared By:
Sujith Saji
Senior Test Engineer

2. 1. Introduction to structure ofTravel Site Business.
This section briefly explains the diverse areas of Travel business .Which will explain the
main Products and Service and what they mean to Industry and theirimportance. Mainly
Car, Hotel, Car Services, Rail and Hotel. Apart from the products there are elements
like Agents, Travel Companies, Travel sites;GDS (Global Distribution System) etc.
which are also is the core of Business. Here we could see and predict the dependencies

3. and relations between each components and Role. Each and Every traveler is highly
depending on the each component in Travel Industry hence its importance is very much
higher in business points. Below are main components of the travel Business structure.
Above picture simply shows the complexity in the Travel Distribution Business.
Influence of travel and tourism to Worldwide- Economy.
The industry contributes in Trillions to
Global Economy and hence the profit part
also approximately predictable. Reports
from World Tourism Organization shows
theInternational tourist arrival increases.
Increasing travel revenue contributes to
world economy in numerous ways.

5. The Profit Part of Airlines Travel Industry
Below graphs shows how bigare the Airline Travel Industry Business and its Growth in
Billion USD.
Picture Source: Wikipedia

6. Picture Source : Wikipedia
Booking Websites
Web sites play a vital role in selling itineraries of Air, car, Hotel, Rail etc.
Below are major travel sites. A category of sites operates only for business travelers
which provide extra features to site to control and manage travel plans.

7. From the industry reports it clearly shows that most of the Part of revenue is from Online
Travel Booking Sites and Travel sites plays as Core when it comes to Bookings. Here
we will discuss about the factors affecting a Travel sites and how a user prefer a site.
1 Factors influencing users to prefer an Online travel site
Quality and consistency of a Travel site or App plays a vital role for travelersto purchase
products according to their Travel plan .Availability of Products Air, Car, and Hotel etc.
Places, Interesting packages, Customer Services the most important is the quality of the
travel site. What would a traveler think when there occurs a failure while booking a
flight, or they are stuck with
error, flight missed due to
wrong time showed,
Or If the Flight is not ticketed
or Segments got canceled
when he
Reach Airport. It will be pretty
much sure that traveler won’t
try book 2nd time onwards
form that site. So what is the
Vital Component which is
missing? It is the Quality of
the site. A department in company which controls and performs testing and related
activities. Nowadays most of travel companies will be having online travel site,
Customer car Call centers, Phone booking systems etc. Here we will be discussing
about the Core of booking elements. The core part is, without any doubts, it is the GDS
(Global Distribution system).Where the actual availability of products is, and the
booking, cancelations happen. GDS (Global Distribution System) refers to the
reservation tool travel agents use when making an air, hotel, car or other travel service
booking. And not only do GDSs power the content of ‘traditional’ travel agency
platforms, but they also provide pricing, availability and reservation functionality to many
online travel agencies.
2 Importance of testing the travel site and GDS
For a traveler below are the main information’s which need to be correct for a hassle
free travel.Because if the traveler name is not matching then the Airline authorities may
not allow traveler to travel. If the Ticket is canceled or not ticketed or in Held status then

8. also the traveler will be in trouble to reach the destination on time. And assume if there
is a request for wheel chair or food items which was not recorded in gds.Here is the
importance of a well-tested online travel site comes to play a main role when a user
prefer a site to book with confident.
Below islittle Information from Apollo GDS from A PNR - (Passenger Name Record)
Flight information’s in GDS after Purchase of United Airline
We could see cheerfulness of travelers when travelers reach destination without any
issues as perTraveler’s requirements and requests. This is the most important part
‘when a traveler says he would recommend’ a travel site for himself and to others to
book itineraries.
3 Core of Booking System – The GDS , benefits ,types, and What to Test
Closely 300 million active Internet users have already purchased travel online. Online
travel bookings have exceeded $100 billion since 2005. GDS on average produces up
to 30% of all hotel bookings. The biggest advantage for any hotel is having

9. the largest online exposure to the online markets through GDS where millions of buyers
and sellers work together to exchange travel services.GDS is an acronym for Global
Distribution System and is an online system which delivers rates, inventory, discounts,
rooms, and descriptions to the many systems supported by GDS.The GDS system
includes high traffic portal travel sites or channels including Orbitz, Expedia,
Hotels.com, Travelocity, AAA, Hotwire, Priceline and Travel Web. Orbitz has their
Merchant Program. Most importantly all travel agent systems are included, such as
Sabre, Pegasus, Galileo, World span, and Amadeus just to name a few of the familiar
ones.
Types of GDS
Main type of GDS includes Abacus, Travelport-Galileo&Worldspan, Sabre and
Amadeus.
Benefits
 Worldwide exposure of itineraries.
 B2B and B2C distribution.
 GDS distribution is the entry door to corporate
bookers.
 Targeting all Travel Agencies independently of
the GDS (distribution platform they may use).
 24/7 travel agent access to your inventory.
 24/7 travel agent access to your full descriptive and multimedia content
There are many factors to consider while testing a reservation in GDS. All the
Products flows start with a Search, A search consists of mainly location, dates,
number and type of travelers, type of flights, hotels, cars etc. Travelers then choose
the itinerary; next part is the reprise of itineraries. This will check the actual
availability of selected itinerary in GDs and will block that itin for few times. Then the
Booking / Cancellation will happen in GDS.
4 Setting up a Virtual Travel Site Test Work Flow
This is the most important part when it comes to testing. Test team need to have all the
test systems andEnvironments connected to make a successful test.The scenario starts

10. from customers, through different layers ofPurchase flow and to back end DB, GDS
system. Test systems will be connecting to all different types of GDS as per
theRequirements of each Travel sites. An End - to End Flow will be covered to make
sure the Site works seamlessly and withQuality to meet the customer needs and
Confident. Since the core is GDS, below diagrams will take you to different GDS
commands to verify a Successful Booking, which startsfromavailability search, Sell,
Seats, Loyalty, SSR and the Cancel, Void statuses.
Below are basic Scenarios
Above picture shows a sample booking flow.
PNR Remarks, type of remarks.
Remarks are the information’s stored in PNR, which is used for different purpose
ranging from the ticketing robots to tickets, cancel, allocate special requests,

11. understand passenger info, identifySecurity info’s etc. Below are few PNR remarks
types from Apollo GDS. Remarks format may be different for Each GDS.

13. Supplier Connectivity
In certain cases a travel site need to connect directly to supplier system to get their
itineraries of Air, Hotel, Car or Rail. An example for this case is – In order to book
Alaska/American Airlines etc. a travel site need to directly connect to each supplier
system directly. The suppliers will be either a GDS/CRS/Direct connect. Most travel
sites receives inventory through these suppliers also, and sells them using a variety of
different business models This connectivity maintain the availability of Major
Airlines/Car/Hotel itineraries in travel site.
Below are few item to consider to test.
Availability, seats, amenities, book ability, tickets, remarks etc
Farelogix Direct Connect
The Farelogix Direct Connect lets consumers to create and manage
bookings out of the Carrier Reservation System without 3rd party involvement. It is highly
stable and reliable system. It contributes to airlines in different ways like traveler
authentication, sale of ancillary services, and distribution cost savings.
Below are few functions to test in travel sites.
• Shopping.
• Bundled Fares
• Support of for personalized offers.
• Pricing.
• Availability.
• Reservation placement and management.
• Seat assign
• Ticketing, Exchange, Refund, Void.
Offline Reservations and loading the latest data to travel site
At present most reservations are subjected to have modifications with respect to
customer needs via agents help. Any offline actions completed outside the system by
our customer may also left not updated in Travel sites, and hence the frustration and
confusion begins.
Below are important item under test. Making different products offline reservation, make
changes to PNR, Sync info to travel site etc.
File Finishing and PNR Queuing
Reservations via Travel sites/Booking systems need to be in the format that can be
integrated with external servicing agency tools to process. Moreover, there are different
PNR format for remarks and fields for each company. Creating the PNRs in the
particular format definitions is known as “file finishing” and is often used by mid and
back-offices for reporting purposes.

14. Below are few item to test Remark types, Remark formats, and remarks in different
GDS etc.
Notes: This doc is only to understand the area covered, not for selling or not for
any
Business purpose.