Product Overview

The ComTel Translator System provides companies who manage one or more hospitality facilities, be they properties, cruise ships or airlines, to easily integrate their management systems with one or more Central Reservation Systems (CRS). The ComTel Translator System translates and maps messages from a source to the requirements of the destination without the requirement to change the message handling attributes of either system.

The system will also allow for the interpretation of messages such as facsimile and emails that conform to pre-determined structures so that those messages may be passed to the CRS for processing.
The ComTel Translator System is an ideal way to integrate third party systems such as:

• Global Distribution Systems (GDS);
• Credit and Debit Card processing;
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM);
• Yield Management;

.......and many others.

Prior to the introduction of the ComTel Translator System technology, this has either been difficult or of limited value as it was not possible for users to view, in real-time, the activities and history across the entire range of systems in their network. Other issues included the cost and expertise required to change the way these systems communicated with the outside world. There is no globally recognised interface standard between these applications – the ComTel Translator System addresses this issue and allows companies to easily, efficiently and with minimal expense, integrate these diverse applications to provide an enterprise-wide view of their operations.

Benefits

The ComTel Translator System allows a company to have an integrated view of all information on their computer systems. Having achieved this integration, companies can implement "best of breed" solutions from third parties, to provide better management and control of many aspects of their business. ComTel Resources does not supply applications such as Yield Management or Central Reservation Systems. We are the glue that allows the customer to select the best possible solutions for their operations and then efficiently unite those solutions into their enterprise. Some of the accruing benefits could include:

• Front Office and Reservations:
  • Remote sales with instant confirmation;
  • No more Blocks?
  • Instant online confirmation;
  • Interface to financial institutions;
  • Guest and Payment history;
• Management:
  • Integration of diverse business gateways;
  • Improved forecasting;
  • Centralisation of inventory control and marketing. Instant pre-approvals and approvals become available on a system-wide basis for credit and debit cards as part of the normal check-in and reservation services.
  • Property acquisition issues.  As properties are acquired, incumbent Property Management Systems can be easily integrated with the Central Reservation System without the need for either replacement or expensive upgrades.
  • Improved management control;
  • Yield management control;
  • No upgrades to currently installed applications.

Systems, be they in the Property or within the "Head Office" structure can be easily integrated to provide an enterprise view of the operation.

Functionality

The ComTel Translator System includes the ability to:

• translate records from one format to another. Record source structures may differ from the destination structure, for example the source may be XML while the destination is an ODBC compliant database or a comma delimited file;
• simultaneously interface many diverse applications such as Property Management Systems, Yield Management applications, Central Reservation Systems, Card Processing and many other applications, irrespective of the product supplier;
• manage the transfer of messages to ensure delivery to their destination;
• translate structured formats such as email and facsimile for transfer to a destination Central Reservation System or Property Management System;
• "split" messages to different applications and subsequently re-assemble the responses for final delivery to the initiating application. An example of this may be confirming a reservation while at the same time obtaining credit approval from a financial institution. When all parts of the transaction are confirmed the resulting transactions are re-assembled and presented to the originating application;
• mark interfaces as "active", "in test" or "inactive". This has two main applications, simplification of testing of new interfaces prior to production and the ability to temporarily take an application offline for maintenance or upgrade purposes while not affecting the production capability of other active tasks;
• provide a comprehensive audit log of all transactions for subsequent analysis or problem tracking.