Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Supplier Central Reservation Offices

The growth of travel in the 1960s that prompted airlines to develop computerized reservation systems put similar pressures on hotel chains and other travel service vendors.  Hotels and car rental offices were receiving growing numbers of telephone calls, letters, and telexes from their customers wanting to book their services.  Hotel chains and other travel service suppliers determined that the best way to serve the consumer, and provide a valuable service to the hotels within the chain, was to develop their own central reservation offices (CROs).
    Facilitating this growth in CROs was the introduction of toll-free telephone services in the United States in the mid-60s.  Hotel chain and hotel representation company executives, with those at Holiday Inn in the lead, recognized the new telephone technology as an opportunity to gain a competitive advantage by offering greater service to the traveling public as well as their hotel properties.
    Before the development of their own computer reservation systems, telephone calls to the first hotel company central reservation offices were answered by agents who responded to room requests by looking at walls covered with "Availability Blackboards" or at massive books, which were updated by hand.  As call volumes steadily grew, these operating methods were quickly overwhelmed.

    The same factors, that had prompted airlines to develop computerized reservation systems, led executives of car rental, hotel, and other travel companies to build similar systems.  In the early 1970s, Westin Hotels and Resorts (then Western International Hotels) developed a hotel version of United Airline's APOLLO reservation system.  The result was "Westron", which was activated in December 1974.  In subsequent years Westron was licensed to seven major hotel chains and became the industry standard.

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