Brian Dent

This testimony begins in the ‘Ireland’s first computers 1956-69’ archive. Click here to view.

Towards the end of the 1970s travel agents began to automate their businesses. Aer Lingus supplied Astral terminals to a few key travel agencies. These proved popular and as the percentage of bookings that came through travel agents increased in the following years, more agencies started asking for an online reservations service. The Travel Industry Multi-Access System (Timas) was the result of this pressure.

In October 1982 Aer Lingus joined with the Irish Travel Agents’ Association through their Automation & Investments (A&I) company and with Videcom, which sold specialist switches and terminals, to launch this service. Timas was ‘multi-access’ and allowed access to three airlines and a tour operator at the launch date. Four years later this had grown to twelve airlines, three tour operators and two ferry companies.

The service had very few staff in its early years. Dick Brennan was the general manager, Clare Hallinan-Flood looked after customer service and Rynagh Flynn was the only programmer. Most of the operations people were on secondment from Cara supplemented by a number of contract personnel.

In 1987 a major update of the Timas system was embarked upon with an investment of £750,000 in new hardware and software, with a go live date of January 1988. This was to allow the use of PCs in place of dedicated Apollo dumb terminals and to replace Videcom’s proprietary communications protocols with X.25. In addition connection would also be possible through Telecom Eireann’s Eirpac dial-up service. The Timas board, having evaluated a number of proposals, selected Videcom Epic hardware and Datalex software for this major update.

Brian at the time that he joined Timas in 1988.
(Photograph by Robert Allen)

In mid 1988 the Timas board determined that a new management structure was needed and put in place a new organisational structure with three general managers under a new CEO. Dick Brennan handled business development, Eoin Delaney was in charge of sales and I was responsible for operations and technical support. Jim Melly became the CEO.

There were a number of initial problems with the upgraded Timas system. One major issue was getting the Datalex software to work reliably with the Epic switch. The lack of management control software to provide operational status of the network and flag points of failure when they occurred was also a big problem. The Eirpac connections proved to be expensive as you paid for call duration and slow response times at the agency terminals was also an issue. The travel agency community was very dissatisfied with the performance of the system but the A&I members agreed to give the new management a chance to sort things out. We started by building up our team and bringing more expertise in-house. Many of the staff on secondment from Cara opted to join Timas, including Tom Coade who came on board as network manager. Tom left in early 1993 to set up his own company and was replaced by Rob Cowan as network manger.

In October 1989 we introduced access to the Galileo GDS. The GDS service eliminated the issue of airline bias on availability displays as prohibited by EU regulations. As Galileo was based on original American software it employed a long established communications protocol that was specific to the aviation industry. In Timas we felt this was a backward step as we were already running X.25, an international open standard architecture.

Travicom – the British equivalent of Timas – also wished to use X.25 for Galileo distribution. Travicom’s John Spur and myself had many interesting meetings and debates with Galileo technical staff and eventually Galileo agreed to support X.25. Timas could not have achieved this success alone, it was only with the weight of the British Travicom people also behind it that we were successful. Timas continued as a multi-access system and utilised the Datalex PC cards to provide videotext displays on PC screens. Galileo formally announced Timas as its Irish distributor in February 1990.

In mid 1991 we addressed the network performance problem by launching the largest private X.25 network in Ireland. We invested in Plessey-Telenet switches and replaced our analogue leased lines with digital circuits. Our technicians were able at last to properly manage the network, to see what was happening on the nodes and for those agencies running Galileo local area networks we were able to monitor the service through to the Galileo gateway. The new digital backbone was based on a ring topology and if a communications link failure occurred traffic was automatically rerouted. The management software also allowed early detection of transmission errors and the performance of preventative maintenance on circuits before they developed into line down situations.

As well as the network upgrade we signed a facilities management contract with American telco Sprint and became a Sprint reseller. We also managed the Sprint node that Esat used with its auto-diallers to route traffic onto the Sprint global network. Finally the Galileo traffic that had routed through the Aer Lingus communication controllers in Dublin Airport was redirected onto the Sprint node thus removing the final weak link in the communications service.

The Galileo Ireland network in 1995 – the largest private X.25 network in the country.
(Source: Company brochure courtesy of Brian Dent)

Travel agents benefited from the increased number of nodes, from 7 to 14, in the Timas network. The extra nodes allowed us to average the cost of the local links from node to travel agency and charge a standard line cost to every agency. Timas generated revenue by receiving a payment from Galileo for every booking made and this was shared with agencies to offset against the communications and hardware costs.

Timas changed its trading name to Galileo Ireland and completed its transition from the old multi-access service on 31 December 1994. The travel trade now had a single point of contact for making reservations on a wide range of airlines and for selling other travel services.

By the mid 1990s the agents were asking Galileo Ireland about internet access to the GDS. I remember one tour of the country where almost all the people that I met wanted to talk about this. We were, however, committed to the Galileo Focalpoint agency software, a Microsoft Windows-based architecture and its development process, and would only be able to introduce an internet version if and when Galileo developed it. Focalpoint was the proprietary agent access software of Galileo and it required training and expertise in airline reservations to be used effectively.

Interest in offering customer services through the internet also began to increase by the mid 1990s but most agencies lacked the expertise to implement and support their own internet platforms. On the supplier side, while GDS distribution was relatively expensive, airlines with the exception of Ryanair were happy to continue distribution through their GDS connections. Ryanair did not provide inter airline connection bookings and consequently had a much simpler operational schedule and ticketing requirements. Ryanair launched its web booking facility in 2000. Tour operators and hotel suppliers were quicker to move to the internet and take advantage of the graphical interface.

Agencies with corporate customers found the GDS Focalpoint access best suited their business model, as the itineraries that they booked were more complex, multi-leg across various carriers often with hotel and car hire additions. The GDS was able to price and ticket these itineraries, storing the passenger name record in its database with notifications sent via SITA to each travel vendor involved in the booking. This centralised itinerary storage made support of the corporate traveller easier especially if changes were required mid-travel.

Leisure-oriented agencies tended to book simpler itineraries, usually out and back on the same airline. They started using the internet to book hotels, car hire and holidays, tracking the multi-vendor booking through their in-house back office systems.

Among the early adopters Atlas Travel, led by Stephen McKenna, was one of the first to launch an agency web site in 1995. These sites initially were information only (non-booking) showcasing the travel offerings of the agency, with potential customer query back to the agency. The next stage was utilising ‘screen scraping’ to emulate an agent terminal to display and book GDS information. This type of access had limitations as, when a query or response format changed, the whole process ceased to function until programmers implemented the new formats.

Developments on the Galileo GDS moved quickly to providing an API/EDI interface with which third party programmers could develop web server applications that supported interactive queries and bookings on the GDS. Atlas Travel, for example, launched GOHOP, based on the Datalex platform, in 1997.

In 1998 I was head hunted by Neil Wilson, CEO of Datalex, to join his senior management team when it was preparing for an initial public offering (IPO). My principal role was in mergers and acquisitions with a view to expanding the Datalex product offering and consolidating the customer base. The IPO was launched in October 2000.

Last edit: April 2019

© Brian Dent 2019