Neal Sunners, CIO, ebookers says there are plans for development of a new CMS tool.

Published: 01 Nov 2005

Neal Sunners, CIO, ebookers says there are plans for development of a new CMS tool.

In an interview with Eyefortravel.com, on major initiatives this year
Sunners says, "There has been a huge integration effort of all B2C
international market companies, including ebookers, Octopus and
Flairview, into the Cendant TDS group which has been our primary
initiative this year. With further integration towards building out the
technology of Orbitz to provide a single global platform we're in the
process of creating our own CMS tool to fit our business model."

Sunners adds," We are developing a CMS solution that is as lightweight
as possible and can deliver publishing features to staff across multiple
regions with an affective publishing workflow through staging and
production environments."

Sunners agrees that ebookers acquisition by Cendant has resulted in
integration challenges into the rest of the Cendant group.

Sunners says, "Ebookers has been acquired by Cendant, which has clearly
led to integration challenges into the rest of the Cendant group. We
have an ongoing integration programme affecting almost all areas of the
business which will have a major bearing on how affective ebookers will
be within the online travel market in the future."

"The online travel market itself is extremely competitive but we are
confident that with the fulfillment of our integration strategies we
will improve our standing further within the market. Other typical
challenges facing us and our competitors are around issues such as speed
to market, site stability, use of affective offshore strategies and
improving product and experience for the customer," said Sunners.

Being a subsidiary of Cendant and how this puts the company in an
advantageous position, Sunners said, "Cendant is an $18 billion
corporation so we have access to capital resources that our competitors
just don't have. We are also able to leverage a wider range of product
from across the Cendant group which provides our customers with an
improved offering. We also now have more clout at the negotiation table
with vendors, having gone from a medium size account to a very large one. As a result we can leverage improved contracts with vendors when
purchasing technology products. Before it's acquisition ebookers
retained it's culture from the dotcom start up days - the acquisition
has taken the company forward to the next level with improved structure,
capital resources, maturity and processes which all result in ebookers
becoming a stronger player in the European market."

Sunners is going to be one of the speakers during the forthcoming
Eyefortravel.com's Travel Distribution Technology 2005 scheduled to take
place in London this month.