E-Ticketing goes global with Gulf Air

Gulf Air recently extended its eticketing platform from Sabre to other Global Distribution Systems from Abacus, Amadeus and Galileo so travel agencies can use any of these platforms to issue etickets for travel between any Gulf Air destination where the facility is available.

"Electronic ticketing is the future and we are glad to be a part of it," says Gulf Air Acting Vice President Information Technology Jalal Alqassab.

"Extending eticketing to our customers is part of Gulf Air's 'Smart Airline and Successful Business' strategy and our continuous efforts to serve our customers better.

"For passengers, eticket offers lower costs and greater flexibility; it provides them with last-minute change options, faster airport check-in and ease of use. No more worries about tickets being stolen, lost or simply forgotten. The booking always remains in the reservation system and can be accessed at any time."

Following the deadline set by IATA's 'Simplifying the Business' strategy, which calls for the withdrawal of all paper tickets from travel agents around the world by the end of 2007, Gulf Air launched eticketing in November 2005 on its London-Bahrain-Singapore-Sydney routes.

This has been gaining popularity as more and more passengers have started using the facility, because of its inherent benefits.

Ever since, Gulf Air has been adding new destinations progressively and now passengers can purchase etickets to travel any destinations between Bahrain, Muscat, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, London, Dublin, Doha, Singapore, Sydney, Johannesburg, Athens, Larnaca, Istanbul, Frankfurt, Cairo, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Mumbai, Delhi, Madras Kuala Lumpur, Dammam and Karachi.

"Electronic ticketing allows storing passenger travel data electronically and is designed to greatly reduce the manual effort spent today on issuing, delivering, tracking and reconciling paper tickets," says Gulf Air Head of Distribution and E-Commerce Lars Denlew.

"Typically a paper ticket today costs up to US$10 to process, whereas the processing cost of an e-ticket is only US$1. IATA processes around 300 million paper tickets each year, which means that a full implementation of e-ticketing could save the industry up to US$ 3.0 billion per year worldwide."