In the Back Office, the PNR was displayed alongside the flight source in the top bar of the record. Now, for low-cost flights via Amadeus, the e-ticket number is also displayed under the name “Secondary flight number” in the record overview tab. In cases where a return is operated by two separate low-cost airlines, both numbers are displayed. These numbers can be used for purposes such as checking into low-cost companies’ sites.
New options for connecting to the SPI, Arkiane and Vakario systems have been added to the platform.
SPI and Arkiane are property management packages; connecting them to Orchestra provides access to large inventories of rental properties from estate agencies. It is now possible to distribute and reserve batches of private landlords directly.
Vakario is an aggregator of sporting services. This system connects local service suppliers. This connectivity makes it possible to distribute these suppliers via the Orchestra platform.
We have made major improvements to service options.
To sell multiple configurable services during the booking process, we display one section for each service type. These sections have a clickable image (push), giving a visual description of the service and letting you open a modal window (pop-in) for selecting services of this type.
Users can choose and configure their services using the pop-in, refining the displayed results by means of filters, then confirm the selection.
The chosen services are then displayed as selected in the corresponding quote page section under the “push” image.
Users can then deselect or edit the details of a service directly on the quote page, or add services by clicking the image again. The overall price is of course updated dynamically to give an insight into the price of services.
Services, and detailed information about them, are displayed in the Back Office once the record has been approved.
As part of the inter-agency agreement implementation process, it can be important to set maximum turnovers per agency.
A non-IATA agency which cannot issue/book tickets must use a referring IATA agency for such transactions, requiring a payment guarantee mechanism (and therefore checks): non-IATA agencies must not be able to make limitless numbers of bookings, and must thus be limited to a threshold number.
It must be possible to change an agency’s threshold at any time, manually, via a parent “administrator” agency.
A responsibility tree could, for example, be defined on 3 levels:
Transactions on Business Volume
For each reservation made by an agency, the agency’s consumption is decreased by the value of the transaction.
This is the Total Business Volume (transport, accommodation, fees, insurance, etc.).
For each payment by the non-IATA agency to a (parent) IATA agency, its consumption is decreased by the same amount because, as the payment has been made, it is therefore possible to “re-credit” the account of the non-IATA agency. Because the payment system is not connected to this mechanism, the decrease/increase is performed manually by the parent agency(ies) by modifying the consumed turnover using an administration interface.
A non-specified turnover threshold means no limit to turnover.
Email alerts are set up as background tasks (jobs) when an agency reaches a percentage of the threshold. This percentage is a configuration which is common to all agencies.
For example, it is possible to generate an alert once the agency has reached 90% of its threshold.
Senders, subjects and content are not configurable and are in English only. The recipient will be the agency that reaches the % of the threshold; the parent agency and the main contact for the account are copied into the alert.
1/ A remote service is also created to collect the threshold information for an agency.
2/ A service is created to update the agency consumption during a booking.
A new interface has been created to view all this information on a per-agency basis.
It is possible for each agency at a level N to view consumption for the agencies it manages (level N-1, N-2). An agency cannot change its own ceiling.
Only agencies with a threshold appear in this interface.
Agency ceilings are changed on an agency-by-agency basis (no bulk changes).
When querying the i-Resa system, it is possible to send the expected language for the system response.
Once the booking has been made, as part of a Marketplace operation, the supplier needs additional information compared to more traditional distribution methods. Depending on the configuration, customer information (email, telephone) and payment information can also be sent when the folder is created in i-Resa.
Lastly, insurance can be added to records using dynamic conditions from the connected system.
It is now possible to filter availabilities displayed in search engine results using a criterion for room categories.
When creating internal insurance, if no criterion is specified (country, producer, distributor, etc.), this insurance will be offered for all products.
An alert is then displayed upon creation of the insurance, to check that the operation is intended: “Warning! You have not selected any criteria: the insurance will therefore apply to all products.”
In order to improve productivity when creating or duplicating editorial content for events, default validity dates can now be pre-filled with the current date, or a preset, configurable number of days from the current date.
Some implementations of the Orchestra platform use criteria in a central, structural way. To secure these implementations, a new user right has been created to restrict edits to Level 1 criteria to a specific set of selected users.
This enhancement consists of the bulk addition of all producers and suppliers to the form for managing a user’s rights in the administration tool. A reverse inheritance system is also used to avoid having to change the access details for each user when adding a new Tour Operator or a new hotel source to the rights of a large number of users.
The addition or deletion of hotel suppliers uses a reverse inheritance system. Reverse inheritance essentially means that when adding a hotel source to a user, it is automatically added to the parents of that user too.
Similarly, when deleting a Tour Operator from a user, it is also deleted from the children of that user. A checkbox has been added to the user rights editing form at the top of the available hotel sources block
The Sharegroop payment system is now integrated into the Orchestra platform. Sharegroup offers a multiple-payment system with direct validation. A payment authorisation for the full total of the record is made to the “captain’s” card to secure records at the time they are booked, despite staged payment by multiple parties.
In order to facilitate the transition from one payment system to another, including records in the process of being finalised, it is now possible to use multiple PSPs from the Back Office.
For example, a deposit for a record can be taken from one payment system, and the balance from another. This enhancement also handles issues with refunds. In this way, if a payment has been made with a specific PSP, the refund is offered via this PSP, with the others greyed out because they are unavailable for this record.
It is now possible to force payment of the whole of the record based on a configurable number of days prior to departure and send information to the payment system about whether the payer is in the travelling party, as well as the composition of the PAX in metadata.
Dpcache is the name of the internal system which calculates availabilities (and call prices) for the pre-packages. It calculates millions of availabilities every day, and is a central system for the Orchestra platform.
The alert system has been improved to limit the number of false positives and accelerate responsiveness in the event of a malfunction in the calculation system.
It is now possible to add a service by hotel, even if the service does not cover the duration of the stay. These services could, for example, be a special Christmas dinner, which will be displayed if the stay covers the date of December 24th.
It is now possible to send the customer’s email address in the booking request for Azor; this applies to all types of flights (low cost, GDS, etc.).
Orchestra was the first platform in the world to be certified by IATA to the NDC 19.1 level 3 standard.
This enhancement complements messages and information about luggage when booking flights using the Amadeus GDS. In cases where the airline does not provide connectivity options for booking luggage, a message is displayed inviting the traveller to visit the company’s website or the airport to add luggage to their air ticket.
Messages may be of this type: