Concorde foreshadows significant expansion of SmartFares

The Concorde Group today foreshadowed significant new developments for its popular SmartFares air fares database after the system won the award as Best Agency Support Service in the 2003 AFTA National Travel Industry Awards, held in Adelaide last weekend.

The Chief Executive of Concorde, Mr Peter Lacaze, said the group was now developing enhancements which would deliver major new productivity improvements for SmartFares users by the end of 2003.

"The AFTA award is a great honour for Concorde and represents a significant endorsement of SmartFares from Australia's retail travel industry," said Mr Lacaze. "It also gives us the confidence to continue improving and expanding Smartfares, and related products."

Launched in February 1997, SmartFares has become not only a leader in the field of air fare search engines, but an important part of the travel industry infrastructure in Australia, and increasingly in New Zealand, Asia and Africa, where various versions of the database are in use.

"We are delighted with the wide industry acceptance of SmartFares and the significant progress and contribution which this system has made," said Mr Lacaze.

"It has become a cornerstone product for Concorde and for the Australian retail travel industry, and is continuing to evolve."

Mr Lacaze said productivity was becoming increasingly important for travel agents at a time of greater competition and falling yields, and SmartFares was specifically addressing this requirement by delivering information quickly and easily, to maximise productive selling time.

"Smartfares has used technology to deliver not only a vast range of air fares but also significant productivity increases for travel agents, by automatically seeking out the prices that most meet the requirements of their customers," said Mr Lacaze.

"We have enhanced SmartFares with features such as FareCompare, which enables agents to compare a range of air fares on the same screen, and recently we expanded the concept to offer accommodation bookings worldwide with the introduction of SmartHotels.

"The next enhancements, on which we are now working, will take SmartFares a significant new step forward and deliver even greater productivity gains to travel agents throughout Australia."