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Redefining high-touch: part one of a series.

Article Excerpt
As most corporate travel managers focus on driving online booking adoption and reducing transaction costs, the concept of "high-touch" travel, whether based on price, reservation complexity or level of customer personalization, is experiencing a cultural shift. With e-fulfilled or "no-touch" transactions becoming the industry norm and a baseline for determining transaction processing services necessary to complete a reservation, some travel managers and agency executives said any agent-assisted transaction now is defined as high-touch in light of increasingly automated fulfillment.

"What we always considered standard and high-touch is now all high-touch," said Patricia Carlin, travel manager for Dublin, Calif.-based technology firm Sybase. "It's becoming much more specific and sophisticated on one level, and much simpler on another." As automation replaces functions typically factored into a high-touch transaction--such as ticket upgrades, refunds and exchanges--the definition of truly high-touch service is increasingly narrowing and customers who require it are easier to...

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