Suzie has been working as a flight attendant with a major airline for the past 8years. She enjoys every bit of her career. She has seen the world, travelling has allowed her to see continents and countries that she feels she may not have seen otherwise. Travel has been her passion since childhood and this was the best way for her to explore the world. Besides the travel involved in the job, most airlines allow their employees to travel for free or at greatly reduced rates. Although Suzie benefits a lot from Airline Staff travel discount, yet she faces a major drawback with this system.
Suzie is currently 31 years married and has a family in Yorkshire. She avails travel benefits tickets for herself as well as her family. If Suzie has to book these tickets she must contact the travel desk of the airlines, which is headquartered in Cologne, Germany. The travel desk needs to go through her records, check the availability of date and flight seats, there a procedure of hierarchy approvals that needs to be processed after which the travel desk confirms a ticket. On the flipside Suzie could lose out on a lot benefits, there were high changes of her losing out on confirmed staff seat. There are no listings or booking for staff members, this makes the staff travel unpredictable and chances of Suzie being bumped off a flight, since airlines give their revenue passengers priority over their staff. Many airline companies have strict rules, if the staff travel privileges are utilized, the staff must report for their duty immediately. This task of ticketing was getting uphill, not just for the staff but for the airline as well.
Airlines began to sort for a solution which could be consolidated, hence reducing the hassle in ticket booking for the staff. This is when the concept on Airline Staff travel Booking came in. The Pass Bureau of the airline handles all activities related to staff travel, be it Leisure or Duty travel they are responsible for the bookings. They involve a wide range of activities from booking of flights to accommodation, some airlines occasionally book car rentals for employees who travel on business.
Now if Suzie were to travel to Malaysia with her family for a “Truly Asian”, experience, her staff tickets would count under leisure travel. She is eligible to travel at her own will. The only problem she has been encountering here is the ticketing process she and her dependants have to go through, to track down tickets and get a reservation for seats at the time she desires to fly.
Besides leisure travel, airlines offer duty travel or business travel. Business travels are more critical since employees travel purely on Duty. These travels are business related the employees need to be given a smooth service. Apart from this, the staff travel department also becomes responsible for arrangements for visiting consultants to the airline, which may be grouped along with business travel and travel of temporary employees. Other activities that may be done by the staff travel department include jumpseat travel, vendor travel, travel agency travel, and deadhead travel. At times, the responsibilities related to staff travel for a partner airline may also be handled by the main airline's staff travel desk. Handling and managing all this was a risqué job.
The airline company, for which Suzie worked for, heard about a staff travel solution that could make the process of ticketing seem seamless and easy. A system through which staff could booking tickets more easily with 24/7 support from anywhere at any time.
The company wanted a module that would make quick ticketing process hassle free, user friendly and easy software that could be integrated on all modules at the same time it must be maintenance friendly.
The staff travel mainly comprises of human resource team, payroll, revenue accounting, finance and IT. The services are used by all staff members in the organization and retired staff. The staff team maintains a good relation with their staff; they take feedback, pain areas and try to address the same. The biggest concern of the staff was the ticket claims.
An airline staff travel system addresses to all the staff travel issues faced by the airline staff travel desk. The system was designed and integrated to allow all the staff to book tickets online at anytime from anywhere. The staff travel system has a booking engine to carry out live air bookings. The automatic ticketing system reduces the work load on the processing agents, eliminating errors while computing taxes and fares.
All Staff Travel Systems are designed and integrated to bring a smile a smile on the faces of staff like Suzie. When a staff member checks into the site to apply for a ticket, the process is quick and it save processing time. Agents can now relax as the responsibility of processing has been lowered from their shoulders. The tracking system works with accuracy hence helping the agents to track the requests of the requester en route.
Duty travel approval saves an employee time in approaching their supervisors. He can claim his expenses after returning from duty travel. The automated online transfer of Duty travel claims the amount to salary, thus saving manual input into financial system.
Staff travel system has now picked up pace in the market, airlines sort to implement the system in the company. Staff travels management carters to a global delivery system, providing various flight benefits customized by the airline to tailor to their staff policies.
The system has modules that offer privilege and business travel benefits, these benefits are categorized for each staff according to grade. Based on the eligibility, the staff and immediate family members are entitled to various Travel booking Privileges or recreational benefits. The airlines takes into account, the hierarchy and position of the staff before the ticket discounts are determined.
As per the airline travel policies various duty travel claims and management benefits are offered to the staff. Travel requests can be routed through approval hierarchy defined for the staff. The passengers can view their booking history and manage their bookings. The system enables the traveler to view his/her approval and travel status.
Airline booking systems also have modules to generate reports, manage bookings and profile management. Mr. Alexander, who works on the HR team for an African Airlines feel that this system has the best performance level. He quotes, “15 years ago, managing records was a hard task, everything was manual and there were many errors recorded in our system. After the implementation of staff travel system this task is simple, the system integrates with our HR modules. We have very few chances of errors now.”
The airline system has a unique login Id for every staff member. The member can view his profile and manage the same. He or she can check the status of their tickets as well. This helps not only the staff as well as the managing team to work smoothly.
The customers can book tickets anywhere at any time using credit card, debit cards maestro cards or pay at counter. Now there are no more hassles at the Travel desk, just an easy Airline booking system.
“Before our company had adapted to airline booking system, there were a lot problems and confusions at the travel desks.” says Suzie.
Airhostess Samantha shares how easy Staff travel system has made their travel. She says,” My siblings now enjoy the pleasures of a first class travel; we get tickets based on Zonal Employee Discounts (ZED) and interlining. Travelling has never been more fun.”
Airline staff travel systems are now gaining momentum, more airline companies are using this system as it is organized reducing the rate of manual work. Staff travel solution processes every booking segment in the respective GDS or reservation system of the airline operating the particular flight or leg. In this way, interline settlement between the user and other airlines easy reducing costs and effort considerably.
Now Suzie has no worries booking a ticket, be it Leisure or Duty. Staff Travel System does it all. Like Suzie several airline staff members now find travel easy. With a click of the mouse or with the touch or your cell phones staff travel systems makes your leisure and duty travel enjoyable.
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