DataArt hosted its second Travel Technology Executive Panel in London, to discuss the fate of the traditional travel agent in the face of emerging technologies.
The panel, organized in concert with TravelMole, The Online Community for the Travel and Tourism Industry, discussed what traditional travel agents needed to achieve to stay competitive in the face of new technologies. Graham McKenzie, Managing Director of TravelMole, lead the discussion on how online booking capabilities have allowed travelers to select, book and pay for the most complex itineraries without ever referring to an agent, causing a paradigm shift in the industry.
All panelists agreed that the “traditional” travel agency in the UK market has forever changed. John McEwan, Chairman of ABTA and CEO of Advantage Travel Agents, and David Speakman of Travel Counsellors, both UK Travel industry market veterans, insisted that brick & mortar travel agencies were far from being extinct, yet agents must focus on the soft people skills, deep service, expertise and building relationships in order to continue to be of value to customers. Stuart Ellis, Vice President of GTA Travel agreed on the value of the traditional agencies and said he believed in their future.
Greg Abbot of DataArt suggested that the brick & mortar agencies’ future wasn’t promising, considering the high infrastructure costs and the lower margins in travel products & services. He said agencies would be forced to innovate to stay in business and that technology could be used as a tool to achieve these cost efficiencies within some aspects of their business. At the same time, he noted that the topics of discussion largely centered on the leisure aspect of travel, ignoring verticals like wedding, group travel & MICE travel, all of which were still largely offline. He concluded that there was still a place for the “traditional” agency, where technology has not advanced to the point of anyone becoming its own travel agent.
Roy Graff of Expedia explained that while Expedia initially won a large market share from direct consumers, it now offered great commission and booking tools to agents.
Bobby Healy, CTO of CarTrawler, stated that while the outlook was tough for many agencies and he would not invest in one himself, he believed that agencies who find a niche and who maximize the “trust factor” to their advantage, managing to leverage technology to keep costs at a minimum & increase access to online customers, will prosper.
Leading industry experts gather to discuss the fate of the traditional travel agent in the face of emerging technologies
LONDON – February 18, 2010 – DataArt, a high-end software development company headquartered in New York with R&D centers in Eastern Europe, will host its second Travel Technology Executive Panel on February 24 from 16.00 to 18.30 in central London.
The panel is organized in concert with TravelMole, The Online Community for the Travel and Tourism Industry, and will address the question of whether technology is responsible for the demise of the traditional travel agent.
The evening will be moderated by Graham McKenzie, Managing Director of TravelMole, who will lead the discussion on how online booking capabilities have allowed travelers to select, book and pay for the most complex itineraries without ever referring to an agent, causing a paradigm shift in the industry.
Confirmed speakers include:
To secure your spot at this leading-edge industry panel event, please contact Anna Grevtseva at anna.grevtseva@dataart.com.
About DataArt: DataArt is a high-end software outsourcing company with industry-specific expertise in financial technology, online travel, telecom and media sectors. The company specializes in enterprise application development, system integration and business automation tools. In 2006-2009, DataArt has been named one of the world's top emerging outsourcing providers by BusinessWeek, Global Services 100 and IAOP. Headquartered in New York City, DataArt runs four R&D centers in Russia and the Ukraine, and maintains offices in London, UK.
Media Contact: Vica Vinogradovavica@dataart.com +1-212-378-41-08 x 4014
DataArt will host its second Travel Technology Executive Panel on February 24 from 16.00 to 18.30 in central London.
– By Dmitry Stillermann, DataArt
Dmitry Stillerman, DataArt's Vice President of Enterpirse Project Management, contributed a by-lined article to PMI Virtual Library."In Search of the Perfect Project Management Tool" explores the current state of affairs in project management tools, where "every available solution is either lacking some rather critical features, or is cumbersome to use, or both," making it easy for "any newcomer that addresses all of the shortcomings of the existing products to easily grab a huge market share from the competitors."
Download PDF (Original article)
Software development firm and financial consultancy join forces to deliver end-to-end technology solutions to EMEA clients
NEW YORK, February 4, 2010 – DataArt, a high-end software development company with headquarters in New York and R&D centers in Eastern Europe, and MP Capital, a London, UK based financial services consultancy, today announced that they formed a strategic partnership.
The partnership aims to deliver end-to-end technology solutions to the capital markets industry in EMEA and brings together the best of two worlds: global software engineering capabilities of DataArt, strengthened by years of delivering complex systems to capital markets clients, and an exceptionally strong team at MP Capital, focused on consulting, requirements, architecture and business process optimization.
The partnership enables an experienced near shoring capability to meet the demands of the financial services sector. The combined service offering focuses on front, middle and back office solutions and already has a track record serving the most demanding clients on buy- and sell-side, including alternative asset managers and world-leading investment banks.
“DataArt has long advocated multi-sourcing: a practice where clients pick the best vendors from the market based on their expertise in a particular task,” said Alexei Miller, Executive Vice President of DataArt. “Having two leading vendors establish an efficient direct working relationship makes it easier and, ultimately, more efficient for clients to work with both companies’ resources. We have been very impressed with the deep domain expertise, leadership and innovation that MP Capital teams have shown on our joint projects and are looking forward to a successful partnership.” Jointly, MP Capital and DataArt have the capability to take on projects very early in the process, often at the idea stage, and support it all the way through business case, requirements, design, development, QA and deployment. Given the fast changing environment at many financial institutions, MP Capital and DataArt will have access to each other’s pools of resources to quickly address evolving client needs that often require a combination of domain consulting and software skills, such as extending systems to support new security classes or introducing complex analytical domain-specific calculations.
“The strategy to combine resources through the partnership was in direct response to our clients’ demands, as two things were evident: the post economic crisis caused an increased focus on banks to deliver upon strategies quickly and without the burden of heavy investment in infrastructure and resources; and outsourcing within specialist areas of banking generally underperformed,” said Manish Patel, CEO of MP Capital.
MP Capital and DataArt have been working together on client projects for the past 12 months and tested the relationship to assure that the resources and respective business cultures were compatible to bring their services to the market jointly.
Media Contact: Juliana Allen 617-960-9880media@dataart.com
About MP Capital: MP Capital is a management consultancy, providing advisory services within the financial sector. By providing business solutions that enable clients to develop and strengthen their service offering within realistic frameworks for change, MP Capital has served some of the largest and most complex financial organizations.
