Satyam unveils satellite ticket printing facility

Satyam Computer Services today inaugurated India's first satellite ticket printing (STP) facility, when Thomas Cook issued the first remotely printed airline ticket at the customer implant of Satyam in Secunderabad.

The service has been set up by Thomas Cook, the official travel company for Satyam at Hyderabad. Thomas Cook services Satyam's requests for both domestic and international travel catering to the needs of the Hyderabad-based offices.

The STP facility would help address the sizeable travel requirements from the company and ease the process of travel planning by completely curtailing the delivery time.

With this, Satyam is the first corporate in India to have this facility at their location. Thomas Cook is the first travel agency to have received the approval from the International Air Transport Association (IATA), Singapore, having satisfied all their stringent norms in relation to safety and security of the traffic documents. Globally, STP is prevalent in the US, European and far eastern markets.

Thomas Cook's central reservation system (CRS) partner, Galileo India, implemented the STP.

Speaking on the occasion, Ashwini Kakkar, managing director and chief executive officer of Thomas Cook (India), said, "In this high-tech era, providing convenience through state-of-art technology is an absolute must. Today, as the world is becoming a global village, at Thomas Cook it is our constant endeavour to provide to our customers, facilities of international caliber."

The introduction of the technology will ensure real time delivery of tickets.

With some 'offsite' implant locations of Thomas Cook being located outside the main cities, away from the Thomas Cook servicing branch, use of the STP will result in enhanced efficiency by significantly reducing on servicing time, thereby truly being able to provide customers a 'world class' service.

With around half of the corporate travel business of Thomas Cook being generated through 'offsite' implant locations, use of STP would immensely help in enhancing the service delivery to a geographically wide-spread client base in India.

Congratulating the Thomas Cook team, Satyam's managing director B Rama Raju said, "We are happy to announce another first from Satyam Computer. Thomas Cook has been associated with Satyam for a while now, and this feature will result in uncomplicated and easy travel planning to both the parties."

The mechanism involved in STP is that the 'offsite' implant location would create the bookings and queue the same to the main 'host' at the Thomas Cook office.

The 'host' office would then approve the ticket issuing command and the tickets would get printed 'offsite' at the customer's location.

Already a widely accepted practice across developed western countries, STP is likely to become an industry practice with the active support from IATA.