5.2 Release Notes

Released 13 December 2020

A major release with UI enhancements, new Profile fields/custom labels as well as an additional COVID initiative “Where can I travel? (Covid)” widget.

Release Highlights

Profiles

Additional Mobile field

Profiles have been enhanced to allow an Additional Mobile contact of the traveller, to be stored. This new field will be non-mandatory; the (primary) Mobile and Work contact fields remain mandatory as denoted by the * (asterisks).

The Additional Mobile field may be useful for users who:

• Work remotely overseas (e.g. United Kingdom) and possess a local mobile contact in addition to their primary Mobile (e.g. Australian), as seen in the following example.

• For anyone to record a personal mobile number to allow for an extra contact element in bookings to match Trips with Profiles, as well as for suppliers/vendors (e.g. airlines).

Alternate Email field

Similar to the above-mentioned, the Alternate Email field allows users who possess more than one (1) email address to have this stored in their Profile. This new field will be non-mandatory; the (primary) Traveller Email field remains mandatory as denoted by the * (asterisks), as seen in the following example.

• The Alternate Email field will allow for an extra contact element, including in leisure and off-channel bookings to match Trips with Profiles.

Like the Traveller Email, the Alternate Email must be unique. As such, it is not possible to enter the same email address in more than one (1) profile. Only the (primary) Traveller Email will be enabled for users to sign in to the travel platform.

All Profile contact details including the Alternate Email and Additional Mobile should be those of the traveller, not an arranger or family member. Kudos can communicate all profile Email Addresses and Phone contacts, including Mobile, to suppliers as well as airlines to use in the event of a flight disruption. Affected travellers expect to receive active, fast and transparent information at all times. By communicating directly with the traveller, airlines seek to ensure customer satisfaction even in the event of flight alterations that are unfortunately not always avoidable.

Display Current, Upcoming & Past Trips

Recent enhancements to Trips allow much faster access to trips (booking) data.

• Full trip history can now be retrieved for any traveller (at any point in the future) and allows for additional visibility within a selected Profile.

The new Trips tab embedded in the Profile form view will retrieve all current and upcoming trips, no matter how far in the future. Past trips (historically) are also available to be viewed.^{^}

• Current and upcoming trips are displayed initially, with current travel advisories and alerts appended.

• Past trips are displayed as subsequent

^{^ Though variations can occur, Trips data since approximately Mar/April 2020 is included, or since the client’s initial trading on the travel platform, whichever occurred last.}

Selecting View Itinerary of the desired trip will retrieve the complete Trip Details.

Profile Name - Support Double Byte Characters

Kudos' 5.1 Release saw the support of five (5) languages, including Japanese. The ability to store Japanese (double-byte) characters in the Profile Known As field was also made available.

This release strengthens the acceptance of double-byte characters to additional Profile fields, including first and last names.

The following summarizes the additional Profile fields now accepting double-byte characters.

Profiles integrate with numerous systems including GDSs (e.g. Amadeus) and OBTs (e.g. Cytric, Serko). While Kudos supports Double Byte Characters, others may only accept Latin characters (e.g. English).

Consideration is therefore required by agencies that allow company users (e.g. travellers) to record such characters in the above-mentioned fields.

Agencies are recommended to enable the company-level Is Passport Master setting included in the 4.9 Release. This ensures the traveller’s Passport details are used for integrated systems as they contain Latin characters are only.

“Where can I travel? (Covid)” widget

Kudos' 5.0 Release saw COVID-19 initiatives including an Australian Border Status widget added to the travel platform.

This release sees the addition of the “Where can I travel? (Covid)” widget. This tool provides border restriction information for a vast array of countries globally.

• A search by Country or by Travel Status (Open, Partially Open or Close) is available.

Selecting View Details from the excerpt of information displayed will provide more in-depth details, as shown in the following example for Singapore.

Disclaimer - Kudos Travel Technology aims to provide the most up-to-date Country COVID-19 travel & border restriction information. It can however change quickly. We rely on the information being supplied from the source (e.g. TripsGuard). Users should seek to confirm the information from official websites (e.g. government) and airlines before booking or travelling.

Credits Notification Email

This enhancement is designed to reduce the volume of unused tickets, otherwise known as Credits, from expiring that may otherwise have been possible to be utilised prior.

The Travel Platform already provides a visual indicator of expiring Credits, as shown in the following example.

An email notification will now be sent to both the Traveller and Travel Arranger 30-days prior to expiry.
Data will be sourced from the Credit register held within the platform with the email advice to include:

• Agency’s Booking # (PNR Locator)

• Airline Credit is held with (e.g. Qantas)

• Amount of Credit

• Expiry date of Credit

Supplementary text will be added to inform the recipient of the email notification that travel must be re-booked and completed by the Credit expiration date.

Trip Name Auto Generation

This enhancement is designed to auto-generate a Trip Name for inclusion in the new Profiles - Trips tab.

A City-level Trip name considers travel wholly within the same country (e.g. Australian domestic only). The same trip name will also be applied to simple itineraries that include destinations outside the country of origin.

A Country-level Trip name considers journeys outside the country of origin which contain complex or multiple stopovers in any single country.

The destination determined to hold the highest number of nights/days spent will be considered for the trip name auto-generation. If more than one (1) location hold equal nights/days spent, the first will be considered for the trip name auto-generation.

Requests Queue Unclaimed Highlight

The Requests Queue, accessible by an agency’s TAM (travel consultant), was previously indicating an incorrect time and urgency highlight for booking Requests received.

The following example illustrates the previous behaviour for a Request recently submitted, though reflects an unclaimed period of over 10 hours as well the row is highlighted in red.

The fix will correct the above-mentioned behaviour with consideration to the agency’s Travel Office timezone and Coordinated Universal Time (or UTC) aka GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) or Zulu.

Platform Administration

Custom Labels - Department, Cost Centre & Location

To allow for the increased flexibility of the Profile form for different company requirements, customisation of labels is now available for the selected fields of Department, Cost Centre and Location.

The customisation of field labels is performed by an agency or office Kudos Administration user within a company’s Profile Configuration setup, as shown in the following example.

Suppress Initial Booking Request Email

When the Suppress Initial Booking Request Email is set to no, the booking Request confirmation email is sent to the first traveller within.

Company - Booking Request Customisation (section)

This fix extends the delivery of the confirmation to include the Company Emails - Default Email, as a BCC (blind carbon copy).

This is designed primarily to provide additional visibility and assistance with the management of Requests in the Consultant Desktop - Requests Queue by TAMs (travel consultants).