When airline executives and IT specialists met in a pub in the English Midlands ten years ago to plan the first ever Internet flight booking service, few of them suspected that they would spawn a revolution for the travel industry.
Electronic ticketing now accounts for 38 percent of tickets sold worldwide and the top industry body wants the 265 airlines under its wing to achieve 100 percent paperless ticketing within two years.
"The target date is a must. Every year, we are printing roughly 350 million tickets. We will not print any more paper tickets by 2007," said Giovanni Bisignani, the director general of the International Air Transport Association.
At stake, IATA says, is a US$3 billion annual cost saving for the industry, while wider use of new electronic technologies for self service check-in, luggage handling and freight could offer even more in years to come.
"It's not revolutionary technology, it's not something that we have to invent, it's existing technology," Bisignani explained.
"This will save the industry US$6.5 billion a year, and would make the traveling experience for our passengers more pleasant," he added.
Aviation experts promise savings and improved convenience all the way down the line to the passenger.
"The arrival of the Internet booking engine was the start of the online fares revolution, but it also triggered something else, it gave self service center stage in the travel industry," said Denis McClean, a spokesman for SITA, an IT company devoted to air transport.
In 1995, a subsidiary of the Geneva-based group began working on how to harness the Internet for airlines and canvassing customers.
British Midland (BMI) said it was interested in cutting distribution costs and selling directly instead of passing through travel agents or sales offices.
"In October 1995 there was a meeting in a pub between our software development engineers and the IT people from BMI," said SITA senior vice president Richard Stokes.
"About US$50,000 earmarked for marketing was used to provide a budget and see what we could come up with in time for the Christmas market," he added.
On Dec. 11, 1995 the site was launched, offering to mail tickets or make them available for collection at the terminal.
The first passenger booking a flight from Paris to London also collected a bottle of champagne.
At the time just 40 million people in the world used the Internet. Last year there were 870 million Internet users, according to the UN's International Telecommunications Union.
Bisignani admitted that some less developed areas of the world would face a tough challenge to meet the e-ticketing target.
Europe and the US are well ahead with more than half of airline tickets delivered online. Meanwhile Africa is managing this year's target with 39 percent -- largely due to four airlines.
In North Asia and the Middle East the proportion drops to 11 and two percent respectively.
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