Over a third of travel agents stand to gain from new cost and marketing benefits of e-mail, says new research

Watford, UK - 14th October, 2005 – AXS-One Inc. (AMEX:AXO), a leading provider of high performance records compliance management solutions, today revealed that UK travel agents have the opportunity to reduce mailing costs by leveraging freely available technology. By e-mailing invoices direct to their customers, travel agents can reduce handling and postage costs by up to 96 per cent.

AXS-One’s research found that over one third (35 percent) of the UK’s travel agents still do not utilise e-mail for invoicing their clients. This is despite the adoption of an industry-standard invoice e-mailing and archiving system (that is available at no cost to travel agents) earlier this year by all of the major UK tour operators.

An estimated twenty five million paper invoices are generated by ATOL (Air Travel Organisers Licence) bonded operators every year in the UK. Through the AXS-One e-Delivery Service, travel agents are able to e-mail holiday documentation to their customers and therefore eliminate the cost of printing, posting and handling invoices. Through the service they also reduce the time it takes to deliver confirmation invoices to holidaymakers to seconds, versus the delay of up to two weeks associated with traditional surface mail.

According to AXS-One, the travel agents that are not yet using the system stand to gain from operational savings of up to 27 pence per invoice as well as take advantage of important marketing opportunities.

“The number of tour operator participants who have subscribed to our e-delivery service is now in excess of 40 and it has already attracted over 4,500 agents who receive their tour operator documentation electronically. While we anticipate that this number will rise to over 6,000 agents by the end of 2005, some agents have been slow to embrace the service, as they believe it simply transfers the cost of printing from the operator to the agent. Travel agents need to look at how they can utilise the system for outbound communication and embrace the successes that the financial industry has had with the e-mailing of monthly bank and credit card statements,” said Mark Donkersley, Managing Director at AXS-One UK.

“Not only are these travel agents failing to reap the cost savings of the new online system, but they are also missing out on the important marketing benefit that an e-mail database of their customers could bring. By having access to client history, marketing campaigns will have a higher success rate than before. And with over half (55 per cent) of households in Great Britain accessing the Internet (according to the Office of National Statistics) and travel being among the most common online purchases, there is a clear trend and market requirement here that travel agents need to respond to.”

Jeanne Lally, head of sales for TUI UK added: “It is time for travel agents to grasp the opportunities this new technology offers. By utilising AXS-One’s technology we have been able to reduce our operating costs significantly and deliver a better service to both the travel agent community and our customers. Used in the right way this offers cost savings to the travel agents themselves.”

The AXS-One e-Delivery Service, which is provided at no cost to travel agents, is a hosted, managed service designed to capture and archive securely documentation generated by tour operators and travel agents and to generate and deliver confirmation invoices automatically. The service, which is hosted by MCI, went live in April 2005 and is currently used by the UK’s four largest tour operators – First Choice, My Travel, Thomas Cook and TUI, and over 1,200 independent agents.

About AXS-One Inc.
AXS-One Inc. (AMEX: AXO) is a leading provider of high performance Records Compliance Management solutions. The AXS-One Compliance Platform enables organizations to implement secure, scalable and enforceable policies that address records management for corporate governance, legal discovery and industry regulations such as SEC17a-4, NASD 3010, Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, The Patriot Act and Gramm-Leach Bliley. AXS-One's award-winning technology has been critically acclaimed as best of class and delivers digital archiving, business process management, electronic document delivery and integrated records disposition and discovery for e-mail, instant messaging, images, SAP and other corporate records. Founded in 1979, and headquartered in Rutherford, NJ, AXS-One has offices worldwide including in the United States, Australia, Singapore, United Kingdom and South Africa. For further information, visit the AXS-One web site at http://www.axsone.com.

For more information, please contact:

Ruth Jones / Craig Brophy
Lighthouse PR
+44 (0)20 7494 6570
rjones@lighthousepr.com / cbrophy@lighthousepr.com

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