Emirates adopts Abacus Groups; first in Asia

Monday, 31 December 2012 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Abacus International, Asia Pacific’s leading revenue partner for airlines, recently announced that one of the world’s most admired and innovative airlines, Emirates, has implemented the Abacus Groups suite of solutions.

Abacus Group is the first Group Management Solution adopted by Emirates in Asia. Emirates joins a host of airlines across the region as well as those specifically in the Middle East looking to drive higher efficiency in group booking management and greater sales revenue by leveraging the Abacus Group solution in South Korea and Malaysia initially.

Abacus Groups, designed to help airlines enhance the administration of day-to-day group booking activities and maintain control over the booking process, provides an important productivity and sales generation tool. Through Abacus’ proprietary solution, airlines can leave much of the group servicing and ticketing to Abacus agents; thus freeing up valuable time for the airline sales team to drive new business. The agents, who are given the empowerment to manage airline Group bookings, are also more committed to push sales for those airlines; thus, leveraging Abacus Group can be a source of competitive advantage.

“Asia still has a high propensity to travel in Groups due to the non-homogeneous markets and local languages. Abacus has invested significant resources to create a Group Management product that is customised for Asian work-flows and we are very pleased that Emirates has joined our long list of airline customers who recognized the value of our product. Abacus is all about helping airlines to reduce distribution costs, drive higher revenue and increase productivity,” said Ho Hoong Mau, Division Head of Airline Distribution, Abacus International. The signing between Emirates and Abacus is the latest in a number of Abacus Groups implementations in the Middle East. Etihad Airways, Saudi Arabian Airlines and Gulf Air are also utilising the Abacus suite of solutions which include Abacus GroupRequest and Abacus GroupClaim. Abacus’ wide network, which encompass over 20,000 travel agency locations, has continued to grow at 10% year-on-year, thus underpinning the value and opportunity that exist with Group travel movement in Asia.

Kwak, Ae-Yeon, from Hana Travel, added, “This strategic partnership between Abacus and Emirates only further helps to increase agent productivity and reduce costs in group bookings with one of the world’s youngest and largest fleets, while providing a better group booking rate for travellers and organisations.

We hope that more airlines see the benefits that solutions like Abacus GroupClaim can offer, and how we can all collaborate more closely in a cost-conscious travel landscape.”