Ypsilon.Net AG Germany Vilbeler Landstrasse 203 60388 Frankfurt am Main Germany info@ypsilon.net Ypsilon UK/Ireland The Forum, 277 London Road Burgess Hill RH15 9QU West Sussex United Kingdom uk@ypsilon.net Ypsilon North America P.O Box 2493 Palm Springs, CA 92263-2493 USA us@ypsilon.net Ypsilon Poland/Eastern Europe Flightbox sp. z o.o. ul. Ruska 2 50-079 Wroclaw Poland pl@ypsilon.net
Times have changed
1 The Ypsilon Group 2-3 Organisation & Team 4 infrastructure 5-11 Ypsilon products 12 references 13 Product sheets
The Ypsilon Group Ypsilon.Net AG Ypsilon.Net AG was originally founded in December 1994 by Hans Joachim Klenz who still leads the company as President and CEO. Ypsilon.Net AG is a shareholders company. Today Ypsilon Net AG is established as a leading provider of Internet travel technology used by airlines, consolidators, agencies and the travel industry in general. The core competence of Ypsilon.Net AG lies in the development of modular internet booking engines and web based technology solutions merging content from different sources. The e-travel applications produced and offered by Ypsilon.Net AG are used by thousands of customers worldwide and range from fare management tools and flight booking engines to intranet solutions and internet server applications. The vision that drives us is to continue anticipating the needs and changes of the industry and always deliver flexible solutions right on target. Our goal is to extend our strategic network and become the provider of choice for innovative internet travel technology and content. E-t@cs GmbH The newly founded Etacs GmbH Company with offices in Berlin and Frankfurt distributes and markets the Aurora web based mid and back office software worldwide. Flightbox sp. z o. o. Poland Professional software development. Outsourcing software development can offer considerable savings but requires reliable and accurate partners. Flightbox provides solid, professional and cost effective high end programming. MagicRes GmbH Germany Another asset in the Ypsilon Group is the newly founded MagicRes GmbH. MagiRes supplies full tour operator content for the European market. The innovative MagicRes platform enables comparison and booking of tour operator content in a single array, through direct connectivity to all participating tour operators. 1
Organization & Team Hans Joachim Klenz President and C.E.O. Patrick Alain Coulomb V.P. Sales and Marketing Dr. Siegfried Weiss Chairman of the board and legal counsel Dr. Kai Dirk Huber Board member and legal counsel Rita Maria Klenz Bord member and Director of human resource Heinz Laumen Chief Financial Officer Martha Ickstadt Board member Markus Keim Director Key Account Management and Support Thorsten Zimmermann Manager fare integration department Sue Stempt Director of operations United Kingdom & Ireland Andrej Zavislak Director of operations Poland/Eastern Europe Bernard Stauffer Director of operations North America 2
The most important asset of any company lies in making sure that it has the right people. Those with the practical experience, skill, knowledge and ideas, all of which combine to produce the right product at the right time. The Ypsilon.Net AG team is a multi-national blend of highly professional and experienced staff that merges high-end programmers with experienced travel industry professionals. It is this exact blend of travel industry specialists and experienced programmers that builds the strength of our team and allows us to both identify precisely the needs of the industry and deliver the appropriate solutions. The CEO of Ypsilon.Net AG managed one of Germany largest tour operators for over 10 years and gathered a wealth of experience on the needs of the travel industry. Some of our staff worked several years with GDS; others came from diverse countries and professions in the travel industry. This melting pot of nationalities, knowledge and experience is the driving force behind Ypsilon! 3
Infrastructure We relieve you from the hardware headache 24 hours a day, every day of the year! The digital economy is a real time economy. Inventory suppliers must be able to distribute their inventory efficiently and rely on technology that is powerful enough to sustain thousands of simultaneous visits and queries per seconds without problem or delay. Ypsilon provides just that: a massive and powerful industrial infrastructure based on clustered SUN servers technology, direct IP/VPN connection to all GDS in use, 155Mbit line, multiple 34Mbits and 2Mbits internet lines. From A to Z, a technology you can rely on. Ypsilon Net runs a 365/7/24 operation. The primary server base is located in Frankfurt, Bergen Enkheim with a secondary main server mirror hosted at Telehouse in Frankfurt, Hanauer Landstrasse. A third backup is located in Düsseldorf at one of our provider premises. North America/Canada data exchange servers are located in Tampa, Florida. 4
Ypsilon Products Fare Data Converter One of the unique abilities of Ypsilon.Net is to understand and work with any type of fare database format. We are able to convert diverse formats such as Stadaf, Partners, Patheo, Openfares, Farelogix, Hitchhiker or even several proprietary formats. As long as the fare data is structured and logical, we can exploit it! Ypsilon Fareport In addition to being able to work with basically any type of fare database format, Ypsilon Fareport provides the airline consolidation industry with advanced technology to capture and manage airline fare contracts in a single dynamic database able to satisfy the industry need for multiple channel distribution. Once entered, fares can be immediately displayed and booked via the booking engine, thus reducing the time to market of new fares to a few minutes. Ypsilon Power Pricer Published and Net Fares commission management In todays economy, airlines are under increasing pressure and are passing some of that back on to agents by cutting the built in profit margins that used to be offered, confronting many agents with the necessity to mark-up or calculate percentage off published fares to adjust to the situation. The Ypsilon Power pricer is the perfect tool to discount or mark up published or consolidated net fares according to parameters and calculation models defined by the consolidator. The calculated price is automatically applied in the booking engine, giving wholesalers or agents the possibility to process published fares as de facto net fares and manage precisely their profit margins. The Power pricer, with its simple and easy to use interface is an extremely powerful tool that allows consolidators or agents to manipulate published, net fares, charters and low-cost carriers (dynamic service fee) with all the flexibility and accuracy they could ever need! 5
Ypsilon Flightpro Ypsilon Flightpro is a powerful full-feature, multi lingual, multi currency customised Internet booking engine that enables consumers to make their flights arrangements directly via the Internet with only a few clicks. Ypsilon Flightpro also empowers travel agencies or travel portals to actively sell consolidator net fares, negotiated, published IATA fares inventory, low-cost carriers and webfares online with their own mark-ups and commissions, as well as surcharges and handling fees if desired. Flightpro can also be used for direct retail by inventory suppliers. Consolidators can use Flightpro to sell their inventory directly to consumers from their own web site or create a store front that can be used on third party web pages, therefore enabling them to easily extend their distribution channels. Ypsilon Agentweb Inventory suppliers as well as travel agencies are pressured by the market to optimize agent productivity and maximize profitability. Agents need a system that can simultaneously search and analyse a vast array of fares inventory and the availability for any given request. Ypsilon Agent not only displays a comprehensive list of rule proofed applicable fares but efficiently retrieves their availability within seconds, allowing agents to streamline, improve work flow and increase productivity. Agents that access the consolidator intranet are able to see and book their contracted fares through the consolidator database. Ypsilon Agent handles complex restrictions that can govern a single net or commission based fare without errors and is customized to the travel agency business agreement with its consolidator. The inventory supplier can define selective viewership of fares and individual net price mark-ups per agency. Ypsilon PNR Editor Aimed at the post sales departments the PNR Editor is a complex tool providing the user with an interface to every stored PNR database record. Its primary function is to allow amendments and additions to both the booking record and the sales ledger interface. By reading a PNR and interrogating the net fare database the PNR Editor offers the user a selection of contracts applicable for the amended itinerary, in addition to the GDS published fare quote. Used in conjunction with the Ypsilon Flightpro call centre functionality it provides both restricted user access and a complete audit history of a bookings lifecycle. 6
Ypsilon Converter The PNR converter is part of the new agentweb-pro and contains 2 main functions: the PNR checker and the Price checker The PNR checker validates the remarks of a manually generated booking and adds or amends the remarks automatically to ensure full compatibility with the consolidator pre-defined PNR remarks structure. The PNR checker optimizes the ticketing process or integration into third party management information systems (MIS) or mid/back office systems. It reduces the necessity of manual intervention almost completely. The price checker validates manually generated bookings as well as bookings that were generated through the booking engine and checks instantly if any other GDS or net fare is applicable for the given itinerary. Bookings that are not yet ticketed can be rebooked in another booking class, at another price or fare type that initially was not available or applicable at the original time of booking. The price checker enables rebooking with other fare types (Published, Nego and Corporate Nego, cat35 or net fare). Ypsilon Ticket Shell automator and queueing robot Ypsilon Flightpro interfaces with the ticket shell robot for automatic fare build and fulfilment queueing of the GDS PNR. Building net fare ticket shells using data input into the Fareport database, inclusive of security and fuel surcharges extracted from the applicable published fare calculation, the ticketing robot is capable of handling the majority of airfare contracts. Ticket numbers are inserted directly into the PNRs. Designed to build and compare to GDS published fare shells for data accuracy the robot interrogates its own build and either sends the PNR to a reject queue for manual review or moves the PNR to the queueing robot for the next phase. The queueing robot reads both the PNR itinerary and the database record, building the ticketing time limit and applying the GDS queueing instruction to return the PNR for ticketing on the defined date and queue. Bookings held in an option status are built using the GDS auto-cancel functionality and placed on a separate queue until confirmation is received. Again an inbuilt default mechanism ensures that should all criteria not be met the PNR is placed on to the reject queue for manual review, thus ensuring that all bookings are fulfilled in an accurate and timely manner. Increase staff productivity! Reduce costs! 7
Low costs carriers and Web Fares The one stop solution from Ypsilon Flightpro! Ypsilon.Net AG leads the way, providing fully integrated booking engines to search and book published, negos and consolidator net fares along side low-cost carriers, charters and web fares on one single screen. Ypsilon.Net sophisticated system consolidates the fare query and availability response from all varying sources and returns the results in one single screen to generate a booking, thus considerably reducing the time spent to book a flight and increasing productivity. Low-cost carriers are also available as a Standalone booking engine allowing direct comparison of over 100 low cost carriers and enabling agents to charge a service fee on the total flight price. Furthermore, a passive PNR can be automatically created in the GDS for administration and back office purposes. A growing amount of low-cost carriers are queried via a direct-xml interface with the carrier. Ypsilon Air Connect Ypsilon.Net AG has designed and hosts several Internet reservation systems in key markets to enable airlines to sustain efficient and profitable online operations. The Ypsilon Air Connect booking engine provides multilingual, multi-currency, multi-market point-of-sales support; code share, airline alliance functionality and O&D control (origin and destination) routing validation. In order to constantly stay on top of industry advancements, Ypsilon Net continually invests in product research, development and software engineering giving airlines access to the most advanced Internet technology at all times. Connectivity can be done either via GDS or directly via the airline proprietary reservation system. Airlines need to rely on strong professional hardware infrastructure; Ypsilon provides exactly the kind of robust industrial strength needed for high traffic airline web based reservation systems. 8
Cars / Fly and drive / Fly and stay Merge car or hotel content with flights from different sources. car or hotel content from different source can be merged with low-cost carrier, consolidator net or nego fares as well as published fares or charter flights. The car or hotel content can be captured via XML or via GDS. Price calculation can be marked up by tour operator or agency. Dynamic packaging of car or hotel content with flights while showing a lump-sum price to the end customer. Tour operators fares can be mixed with hotel or car fares and remain fully invisible. Seamless real time booking of both flights and hotel room or flights and car. Full description of hotel and room or vehicule. Possibility to choose different hotels or car with automatic total price update if different hotel room or vehicule is chosen. Full display of rules and conditions of contract of hoteliers or car content provider. GDS PNR updated with all information of hotel or car booking details. Car content is also available as standalone comparison application. Dynamic Packaging In addition to providing traditional fly and drive or fly and hotel, Ypsilon also provides fully packaged solutions. Multiple content are mixed into a single package: Car, hotel, flight, insurance and diverse add-ons can be packaged and booked with the Ypsilon packaging platform. The Ypsilon package platform offers a flexible content management and online distribution solutions for tour operators as well as wholesalers. Packages can be sold as pre-defined fixed price packages or as flexible components selectable within a price range. The flexible package allows the end customer to easily mix and match flights, cars, hotels from an available selection within the package price range to create their own bespoke itinerary. The packaging platform is suited for multi channel distribution: B2C, B2B2C, B2B and call centre. 9
TRANSFARE In order to support Airlines, Consolidators and Travel agencies, Ypsilon developed a graphical interface that provides the possibility to upload negotiated fare data directly into GDS. The data is transferred to the GDS via an XML exchange protocol provided by the GDS using a user-friendly interface. The structure of the interface can be used for uploading fares into any GDS using ATPCO format. FAREBOX Farebox is a web-based data analysing solution that provides airlines with accurate data analysis of issued tickets. Immediate and precise information for all issued tickets is vital element for airlines to compete for market share. Farebox provides airlines with the perfect tool to analyse sales data, plot market progression and to identify and calculate agency debit memos (ADM). 10
Etacs Aurora The revolutionary Aurora application is a new platform that offers travel agents or travel companies a web based integrated mid and back office solution. The main features of Aurora are: Customer Management CRM System Management of bookings Full Accounting Reporting and MIS Interfaces and connectivity SOLOres Multi GDS content aggregation plays a vital role to cope with the challenges of GDS deregulation in order to provide travel sellers with full content integrated-inventory. The absence of one or more major carrier form a GDS could greatly impact a single GDS travel seller, travel sellers will need tools that provide them with multi GDS capability if they want to effectively serve their customers. Solores is the new platform that aggregates fragmented inventory for rates and availability from multiple disparate source. The Solores platform aggregates cross GDS Air content (Amadeus, Apollo, Galileo, Sabre, Worldspan), regular Airlines or lowcost carriers via direct connectivity or web emulation and charters. The Solores content can also be made available to travel sellers via an XML API. 11
references www.bahn.de 11 UP AND AWAY TRAVEL 12...and many others