As the NCAA strives to strike a balance between cost efficiency and comfort in transporting student-athletes to championships, the Association's travel management provider is stepping up efforts to serve the "comfort" part of the equation.

One year into its contract with the NCAA, Short's Travel Management is refining online services to give institutions more advance input into booking trips and making efforts to create more transportation options -- all within the Association's championships travel policies.

Those efforts have resulted in several changes that should be noticeable to anyone who arranged championships travel through Short's last year.

Significant improvements have been made to the NCAA championships portal at the Short's Web site -- the primary access point to the agency's travel services. The online site provides institutions a location to provide contact information, detailed travel preferences, roster manifests, equipment lists and other information that may be needed or useful in booking transportation.

"We have updated our portal with more options for the teams," said Kristin Fratzke, NCAA account director at Short's. "They now are able to view and download their manifest more easily than before. Last year, they were able to input the information but didn't necessarily have as much access to it as we had. They now have the same access to reports and information from their manifest as we do.

"We've also given them the option to add travel groups, so if they are splitting up their travel party -- either at their request or at our request -- they can determine through the portal who they want to go with which group. They only were able to do that verbally before."

Institutions that make full use of the Web portal -- by providing complete information and doing so by established deadlines in each NCAA championship (specific travel policies for each event can be obtained online at www.ncaa.org/financial/
travelforms) -- likely will experience a quicker and more efficient booking process than last year, due to other efforts by the Short's staff.

"We're working very hard at making that a more comfortable process," Fratzke said, noting not only that more emphasis is being placed on timely communication between Short's and institutions, but with commercial and charter air providers, too.

Short's will make every effort, once an agent is assigned to work with a particular team, to keep that agentassigned to the team through the entire championship. In fact, it plans to the degree possible to assign an agent to work with the same school through multiple championships, in order to establish more of what Fratzke called a "comfort factor."

The company also is working much further in advance of championships to lock up air carriers' services for participants.

"What we're doing is putting more processes in place earlier this year, to hopefully speed up travel confirmations once selections are here," Fratzke said. "We're working with our preferred carriers in setting up a fleet of charter aircraft, solely for us to use. We will be able to schedule that aircraft to maximize as many flights as possible. We can't tell teams, you're going to get the charter, because we'll be using commercial space as well, but with this fleet dedicated to the NCAA, we'll be able to schedule the aircraft where we need it the most."

Teams still will be asked to be flexible in their travel preferences, and particularly to be willing to leave a little earlier or later than desired. That flexibility will permit a single aircraft to be used by multiple teams -- perhaps three or more teams per day.

"We are, with the NCAA's help, requesting and requiring flexibility of the teams as they are selected," Fratzke said. "We'll do our best to work within the schedules that they want, but to maximize the use of the aircraft that we have, we have to require flexibility."

Fratzke also noted that options may be limited at times because of market conditions that exist during spring-break periods and the Easter holiday, or from the substantial reduction in available charter aircraft due to military charter needs.

Teams' travel coordinators will be asked to frequently monitor information provided through the Web portal and other means and be prepared to respond quickly to options that are offered, and be able to communicate plans to travel party members right up to departure time.

However, those coordinators can expect to be rewarded with more timely confirmations. In fact, if the experience so far with this fall's championships is any indicator, the improvement may be dramatic.

"From fall last year to fall this year, looking at the first Monday, we issued twice as many tickets this year that day than we did the same day last year, just because we are more familiar with the process, more efficient and able to service the teams better," Fratzke said.

"So far, fall championships are going very well. We have not had hold times for the schools; we're getting back to them very quickly. We've implemented some efficiencies for our agents in working with the carriers that have helped immensely, and the carriers have been very responsive. One of the things we are able to do is send out teams' travel requests by e-mail, and the carriers are responding very quickly to those, where before we spent a lot of time on the phone calling each one of the carriers individually. That was time-consuming, and it might have taken longer for us to get back to the team.

"We've noticed we're able to get back to the teams much quicker with options. Options are still limited due to conditions in the airline industry overall, but we're able to communicate that to the teams much quicker."