Dear customers,
dear partners,

the best thing about this year is probably that it is finally slowly coming to an end. To declare a complete business year as unfortunate and unnecessary is a novelty for us – and hopefully for you, too. However, we now can look forward so much more confidently to the coming weeks and months in which a vaccination will bring us and the world health, safety and the reawakening of the joy of travel.

Speaking of health: we hope you and your employees get through the pandemic well. At BEWOTEC, so far we are in the fortunate position of not having any serious illnesses in our team. Financially, we are also in a solid position to compensate for the decline in sales resulting from the Corona crisis. Although we are working short-time, we can still be there for our customers with our usual energy and innovative spirit, as well as focus on our future topics: the further development of DaVinci and the implementation of STRING, the new booking standard co-developed by BEWOTEC.

Dear partners, let us know how we can help you get your business back on track for success as quickly as possible. Maybe some features of the latest DaVinci releases will help you in this process, for which we would like to give you a brief overview below.

Best wishes

Michael Becher
CEO

Company news: Change in the Management Board

„Best of“ the latest DaVinci Releases
flexRail – the new Rail Interface
Voucher Module
Room Number Module
Additional Revenues with Optional Services

Outlook 2021
Codename „DaVinci NT“
STRING – the new Standard for Bookings

Technical Information
System Requirements
Release Dates

Bernhard Casier, a long-standing manager at BEWOTEC, will take over as Managing Director of the Travel Agency Software division on January 1, 2021, and will thus be responsible for the product portfolio relating to the software solution myJACK.

He replaces Bernhard Koller, who has successfully built up this division over 30 years and is now handing over responsibility for private reasons. With immediate effect, the operative management level of BEWOTEC thus consists of Michael Becher, who continues as shareholder and managing director of the Tour Operator Software division, and Bernhard Casier. We would like to thank Bernhard Koller for his tireless and successful efforts and are pleased that he will remain with the company as shareholder and consultant.

With the DaVinci versions 1087, 1088 and currently 1089, we have rolled out smart features such as the new rail interface flexRail, the Voucher Module and the Optional Services. For further information on the solutions or their integration possibilities, your BEWOTEC contact person is of course at your disposal.

New in version 1087: In the new flexRail area of the flexStore, tour operators use the new rail interface to manage their fares agreed with Deutsche Bahn, which they can add individual markups to for sales steering. The rail trips can be packaged with hotels, cruises

or other services to create attractive dynamic trips and offered in real time with a new vacancy display in all distribution systems.

Good to know: The flexStore can also be used by tour operators who do not have their production on DaVinci.

New in version 1088: Vouchers are becoming increasingly popular in the travel industry – also as a side effect of corona-related cancellations and general uncertainty. BEWOTEC has reacted to this with the introduction of the Voucher Module, which covers all essential processes in the context of voucher booking, redemption and evaluation.

A voucher is mapped as an SO booking code in DaVinci and can therefore be commissioned differently than other services. Systemically, vouchers are regarded as a separate means of payment and are redeemed using the Client Payment method.

The customer receives the voucher as a report (voucher) with tour operator logo, voucher number, validity date and verification code. The redemption is possible via the Genesis booking mask or via DaVinci and thus also via web bookings.

Finally, a new user interface and reports provide information on the total number of vouchers issued as well as individual transactions.

New in version 1089: Reserving your favorite room in the hotel already at the time of booking – what sounds so easy for the traveler sets complex processes in motion, which BEWOTEC now implemented with the Room Number Module.

The basic prerequisite for booking room numbers is the creation of a hotel object in the new DaVinci module, in which, for example, all room features are entered. The bookability of the individual room numbers can also be controlled here by defining restrictions for certain booking channels and/or for certain dates before arrival.

The practical matrix display provides the individual room numbers with their respective status for a queried date range for each hotel object – conveniently sorted by floor and category.

After booking, the room number is shown on the travel documents for the customer. The data including the room number can be transferred electronically to the hotel’s reservation system via an XML interface

New in version 1089: Increasingly, customers want to book sightseeing tours or other activities when booking their flight or hotel – a great opportunity to demonstrate customer service and generate additional revenue.

With the new BEWOTEC function for optional services in all STADIS-based CRSs (myJACK, TOMA and Merlin), the opportunity for more sales has become even easier:

When calling up the vacancy of the primary services, all suitable additional services previously created in DaVinci are displayed. In the booking process, the desired service is simply dragged into the booking via a marker in the vacancy window and appears as an additional service line. Rebookings or cancellations are carried out analogous to the usual processes.

We at BEWOTEC have long been aware that the production and distribution of travel can and must be even faster, more innovative and more customer-friendly – as the turbulences of this crisis year have shown. We are therefore investing in the further development of our systems and are helping to shape industry standards. The following is an initial outlook for 2021:

A selected team of developers is in the midst of our “DaVinci NT” project, with which we want to move to the cloud and break down the boundaries between classic and dynamic production. In fact, we are so focused on redefining and redesigning the relevant processes in travel production in a new and stringent way that we have neglected the name of the new solution and have simply stuck with “DaVinci NT” for the time being.

It is therefore quite possible that we will present our first milestone in our module by module approach – the completely revised module for charter flights – with a different, professional name in spring 2021. Either way, we are very curious to see how you will perceive our vision of the travel production of the NT generation and look forward to sharing it with you soon.

The time is ripe for a modern, powerful booking interface to the leisure travel CRS systems. With regard to the aging STADIS standard the German Travel Association (DRV) has recognized this and set up an industry project. Together with other leading IT providers, BEWOTEC has played a decisive role in defining the new, uniform booking standard STRING (STandard Reservation Interface Next Generation) based on XML, which is being used in the travel industry for the first time at TUI Cruises and will be continuously expanded in 2021.

DaVinci tour operators profit with STRING from

• more content and travel details than with conventional standards
• special suitability for the integration of websites
• more sales channels through direct connection to DaVinci

With STRING, DaVinci already supports relevant TOMA actions such as booking requests, bookings, retrieval of bookings, payments, document printing as well as for cruises the cabin and category search. More information about the STRING project can be found here (http://string.drv.de) or from our support team.

• OS: Windows 8 / Server 2012 R2 / Windows 10 / Server 2016
• SQL: Server 2016 / Server 2017 / Server 2019 (including full-text-search)
• ODBC Treiber: SQL Server Native Client 11.0
• Microsoft Framework 3.5 SP1  / 4.8

• Microsoft XML Parser 4.0 SP2 (x86)
• Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable Package (x86)  2010 / 2013 / 2015 / 2017 / 2019
• Crystal Report: Runtime 2013
• Microsoft ReportViewer 2015 Redistributables (in case of using Reporting Services Reports within DaVinci)

• Version 1087: March 27, 2020
• Version 1088: July 21, 2020
• Version 1089: November 19, 2020