Background
GforGo.com is a revolutionary business to business (B2B) website designed exclusively for the Irish travel industry. It is available on subscription to travel agents, both in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, and one of its sections provides a single consolidated view of the holiday availability of Ireland’s major tour operators.
GforGo.com was born out of TILS, a system which distributed consolidated airfares via Viewdata technology for over 12 years. CEO and owner, Gerry Benson, wanted, as part of a single internet portal, to give agents the ability to search and book holidays from all the major Irish tour operators.
Many Irish travel agents do not have their own websites, and Benson was aware of the need to provide a simple solution for agents to search and book holidays online.
Establishing GforGo.com
Modcomp has worked with several companies in the travel industry and has considerable experience and expertise working with Viewdata technology, which is used widely in the sector.
Gerry Benson met Modcomp at the World Travel Market trade show three years ago, and following several meetings the Modcomp team won the contract to develop the technology to make GforGo.com possible.
Modcomp developed an application which consolidated information from the Viewdata systems of key tour operators into a master database. Modcomp’s ViewMax integration technology was a key element in ensuring the seamless integration with those systems.
The GforGo web front-end was then linked to the database allowing agents to quickly and easily search for holidays on-line and turn their selections into bookings. This now gives the agents access to numerous tour operators holidays through one web browser interface.
Modcomp also wrote specialist software to alert agents to specific visa, health and vaccination requirements for selected destinations, and to automatically translate airport, hotel and destination codes used by the tour operators.
On an ongoing basis, Modcomp provides GforGo.com with support to ensure that information from each of the tour operators is updated on a daily basis, and has also helped GforGo.com make its holiday database accessible to business to consumer (B2C) sites such as www.GoHop.ie.
Conclusion
Within four months of the initial meeting with Modcomp, GforGo.com was up and running. Now, over 25 per cent of all Irish travel agents subscribe and benefit from the speed and simplicity of the single consolidated site.
Gerry Benson was very pleased with the quick turn-around on the project, and explains, “Modcomp is the ideal partner as they deliver a very high tech solution on a very personal basis. The developers have a very business focussed approach, they know what the consumer needs. We found Modcomp to be very affable, easygoing, straight and above board. The work they did was excellent.”
Following the successful development and launch of GforGo.com, the company is planning to work with Modcomp to develop its own B2C website in the future.
About Modcomp
Modcomp is a Systems Integrator with over 25 years experience of building software solutions. It was one of the first systems integrators to help holiday companies get on the web and has worked with Hoseasons, Inghams, Kuoni VJV and First Choice Citalia amongst others.
The travel industry relies heavily on technology. But many travel companies have back-office systems which were developed over 10 years ago and more. While continuing to do the job, such systems restrict the drive to modernise and develop new channels to market, such as the internet. Modcomp provides the technology to rapidly build online booking solutions which are fully integrated with a company’s back-office systems.