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An Internet booking engine (IBE) is an application which helps the travel and tourism industry support reservation through the Internet. It helps consumers to book flights, hotels, holiday packages, insurance and other services online. This is a much needed application for the aviation industry as it has become one of the fastest growing sales channels. IBEs were necessary as the underlying (often called legacy) systems were unable to cater economically for the large number of shopping transactions and the speed of development required by the customers. In most cases the underlying systems were not designed for direct exposure to consumers. == History == In the early days of American aviation, passengers were very few and the airlines did not fly regularly as at present. Ticket fares were regulated by the Civil Aeronautics Board. All routes, fares and flight schedules were published in the Official Airline Guide and travel agents requested reservations by phone or telex. As the number of passengers flying annually began to grow, this manual system could not cope and the airlines looked at upgrading their method of ticketing. In 1946 American Airlines were the very first to come out with an automated booking system. This was called the Electromechanical Reservisor which comprised a temporary storage of magnetic drums. The airline’s operators had to do the actual lookups as travel agents could not directly query this system. 1953 marked the birth of complex airline reservation systems when American Airlines launched the SABRE (Semi-Automatic Business Research Environment) reservation system. Next came DATAS by Delta, Apollo by United Airlines and PARS by Trans World Airlines. Eventually these were replaced by complex Computer reservations systems (CRSs). Originally operated by airlines, CRSs were later extended for the use of travel agents who could query the systems and make reservations themselves. In the early 1980s CRSs were extended with more features and the new systems were able to book and sell tickets for multiple airlines where the earlier CRSs could handle only one. These newly developed systems were called Global Distribution Systems (GDS). Eventually airlines divested their direct holdings in GDS companies, with the notable exception of the Asian carriers who remain owners of the following GDSs: Abacus, Topas, Axess, Infini and Travelsky. In addition Amadeus has Air France/ KLM, Lufthansa and Iberia as minority shareholders. Through a GDS, travel agents could easily retrieve the information needed about many airlines. They had greater information-searching and booking capabilities. Yet passengers themselves needed a travel agent’s assistance when making a booking. If any passenger wanted to book a seat or to go through a schedule they would have to contact the travel agents. So the airlines needed a web-based booking system which will allow the passengers to directly retrieve information about the air schedules, make booking etc. That is when the Internet Booking Engines (IBEs) were introduced. IBEs are used by nearly every airline at present to cut off extra expenses and to support instant booking and payment. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Internet booking engine」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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