• Omnis desktop solution •
Omnis allows developer to become
leading solutions provider in swiss travel market
Zurich
Switzerland
www.onlinetravel.ch
The Challenge: The travel industry is highly competitive with many different suppliers on the high street and on the Internet, all competing to satisfy the needs of the leisure or business traveller. Tour operators and travel agencies need to provide their customers with new and exciting travel offerings while remaining very competitive on price. They also require a high level of automation and data processing, using many different internal and external applications, to make their business efficient and profitable. Above all, travel companies need to be flexible and innovative to stay ahead of their competitors. Therefore, travel companies need software systems that are powerful and adaptable to change, to support business flexibility, and they need IT partners who can react quickly to the demands of the travel industry. Online Travel is such a company, and their number one position in the Swiss travel market is proof of their strength in software development and customer support.
The Solution
Using Omnis Studio they have created solutions to support all aspects of the travel business including CRM for operators and agents, online booking for holiday packages, hotel and flight reservations, back-office support, and so on. Omnis is also used to integrate other distributed systems and databases typically found in travel companies. Two of their applications are developed exclusively with Omnis Studio: ‘TO Online’ is a back-office solution for tour operators, while ‘Agent Online’ is a back-office solution for travel agencies. Being the biggest independent software vendor for the travel industry in Switzerland, Online Travel AG has built up a very strong market position with a relatively small team of developers by using the rapid development capabilities of Omnis Studio.
TO Online enables tour operators to store details about travel agents, as well as hotel and flight information, plus it allows operators to book travel products using standard industry channels and the Internet. TO Online integrates well with other systems, such as accounting software and reservation systems, and it allows operators to import and export data. In terms of functionality and underlying code, Agent Online is very similar to TO Online, but they are configured differently for different segments of the travel market.
The Company
Online Travel AG is based in Zurich and has built up an impressive suite of applications for the travel market.
Why Omnis
Online Travel has been using Omnis Studio for many years, and they have never regretted their decision to adopt Omnis as their foremost application development tool. “For us, Omnis Studio is the ideal product with the depth of functionality to solve complex problems, while offering a simple and easy-to-use development environment that even a non-IT literate person can use to create specialist business solutions,” said Rudolf Bargholz, chief Software Developer and joint Managing Director of Online Travel Services AG.
“With Omnis Studio, we are able to react quickly to changes in the market and we can adapt our products to meet customer requirements quicker than our competitors. In addition, the Omnis development and runtime environments continues to work year after year, providing support for new operating systems and advances in computing technology such as XML and the web. For most of our deployed sites, we use Omnis Studio 3.0.1 which is a very stable release, but we use Studio 4 for all web development and are planning to migrate to Studio 4 in the course of this year.”
“For us, Omnis is not just a good software supplier; they are also a trusted partner who we can talk to about any aspect of our business, whether it is concerning the commercial or technical part of our company. And being a member of the Omnis Developer Partner Program gives us the financial strength and stability to grow our business going forward.”
Rudolf Bargholz,
Chief Software Developer and joint Managing Director of Online Travel Services AG