Category Archives: Technology

SalamAir has announced a strategic tie-up with Tune Protect Commercial Brokerage LLC (Tune Protect EMEIA), to offer an array of travel protection benefits for its passengers. The agreement encompasses travel protection for travel-related uncertainty of the airline’s domestic and international passengers. The travel protection products offered are specially designed for SalamAir travellers. The travel protection programme provides travellers with a host of benefits such as overseas medical expenses, travel cancellation, missed departure, baggage delays, travel delay, emergency medical evacuation, repatriation, personal accident and many more. Captain Mohamed Ahmed, CEO of SalamAir said, “As part of this agreement, we will offer comprehensive travel protection provisions for our customers that will allow them to be assured in case of any travel-related eventuality. Having a travel protection plan enables travellers to travel with peace of mind. Travel Protection is very popular in all markets across the world and we believe that our passengers will benefit from what Tune Protect is offering. Tune Protect offers comprehensive and affordable protection plans to meet the needs of travellers.” Arijit Munshi, General Manager of Tune Protect EMEIA said, “SalamAir is in the midst of its most exciting growth phase and I am sure that the technology provided by Tune Protect EMEIA to facilitate the travel protection programme across its network will provide ease and convenience, as well as a memorable travel experience to SalamAir’s customers.”

Hala Travel Management, an Abu Dhabi based company, has confirmed an extended partnership agreement with Amadeus to develop and deploy digital solutions for its government and corporate clients.  Hala Travel Management is part of the Etihad Aviation Group and has long championed global best practices in digital transformation and provides truly bespoke experiences to its clients. The agreement will span over the next five years with a focus on personalised services, traveller safety, and delivering unparalleled value for money to organisations in the UAE.  As part of the agreement, the company will be able to leverage the strengths of the Amadeus Selling Platform, connecting with global tools such as the Amadeus Online Corporate Traveller, Amadeus Margin Manager, Amadeus Fare Optimiser, the Amadeus B2B Wallet, Mobile Application and its latest Amadeus Value Hotels programme. Ahmed Ershood Al Shehhi, General Manager of Hala Travel Management, said, “We have always looked at technology as an enabler—a tool for providing enhanced, seamless, and more personalised services to our clients. With Amadeus, we have a wealth of digital tools at our fingertips, and are free from technology constraints so that we can put more of our passion to work.” Ernesto Sanchez Beaumont, Managing Director of Amadeus Gulf, said, “We are delighted to be collaborating with Hala Travel Management as a real pioneer in the local travel sector. The Amadeus platforms that they will have access to are built with customers in mind, following thousands of hours of in-depth user research. In this fast-moving industry, such platforms help companies to sell more, move faster, and ultimately serve better.” 

Etihad Airways announced a partnership with Braathens IT to develop TravelPass, an innovative travel solution initially aimed at corporate and frequent travellers which will be launched later this year. The new TravelPass technology provides a subscription-based travel solution, allowing Etihad to offer its frequent guests complete flexibility and ease with their regular and recurring travel arrangements. Customers can purchase a TravelPass for a set number of trips or a particular travel period instead of purchasing flights one by one. Subscription-based travel is good news for the aviation industry as it provides customers with the choice between prepaid trips and pay-as-you-fly options, meeting the demands of flexibility, ease of booking and cost-efficient travel management. Robin Kamark, Chief Commercial Officer, Etihad Aviation Group, said, “The innovative TravelPass technology offers a revolutionary booking experience for corporate and frequent clients who will also be enrolled into our award-winning Etihad Guest frequent flyer programme. By simplifying the travel process to just a few clicks, our guests have a seamless transaction through a platform that holds all your details in one place, gives you the flexibility to make changes to your bookings without fees and gives you the choice to pay later. We know our corporate clients are time-poor and believe this innovative addition to our digital offering will improve the travel journey for subscribers.” Svein Therkelsen, Chief Executive Officer, Braathens IT, said, “Etihad is going to take sophisticated digital personalisation very far, everything from ease of use to customisation. They are an innovative player and they will continue in that direction to improve their customers’ digital experience using TravelPass.”

Accenture opened Dubai Tourism Innovation Hub, the company’s first innovation hub in the Middle East & North Africa region. Located in Dubai Media City, the Dubai Tourism Innovation Hub is an immersive environment that showcases Accenture’s capabilities across a variety of innovative technologies, including extended reality, artificial intelligence, the internet of things, and more. Through industry-focused demos, co-creation sessions, prototyping, and a startup showcase, the Dubai Tourism Innovation Hub provides a platform for clients and partners to tap into Accenture’s global industry knowledge to ideate and develop smart and scalable innovative solutions that help them transform their businesses in the tourism sector. “With tourism development a priority on national agendas across the Gulf Cooperation Council region, we’re excited to launch our very first Tourism Innovation Hub in Dubai,” said Norberto Cibien, Managing Director and Accenture Products industry group lead in the Middle East. “Millions of people will visit Expo 2020 Dubai, and with 70 per cent expected to come from abroad, it’s critical to develop a seamless travel experience, which requires bridging disconnected ecosystem players and catering to unique and evolving customer needs.” Xavier Anglada, Managing Director and Accenture Digital lead in the Middle East, added, “Accenture is proud to harness innovative technologies to support the government and private-sector stakeholders in bringing tailored and new concepts and features to the region. Through the Dubai Tourism Innovation Hub, we will create sustainable and valuable opportunities for business transformation in the tourism sector here in the UAE and across the wider region.”

Al Rajhi Aviation has renewed an exclusive partnership with Sabre Corporation, to support its plans to expand regionally and explore opportunities in online travel. This agreement provides Al Rajhi Aviation with continued access to Sabre’s portfolio of innovative technology and its intelligent platform Sabre Red 360, allowing it to effectively harness data and deliver superior content to its travellers. This unique technology will help enable the travel company to differentiate its offering, compete more effectively and grow faster in the region, as well as expand into the online sector.  Naiyer Alam, General Manager, Al Rajhi Aviation, said, “Our renewed partnership will see us leverage Sabre’s global expertise to enrich our online travel presence, provide exceptional travel experiences and expand our reach beyond Saudi Arabia.” “Saudi Arabia is a unique market with great potential that requires customised solutions to meet the high expectations of its travellers,” said Abdul-Razzaq Iyer, Vice President, Sabre Travel Network Middle East. “We look forward to continue working with Al Rajhi Aviation to provide them with the latest solutions in data, business intelligence, online and mobile capabilities to provide a world class travel experience for both online and offline travel.”

dnata Travel signed a multiyear agreement with Sabre Corporation. The five-year deal will represent an extended, broader relationship between the two companies in the Middle East. Under this agreement, dnata Travel Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Partner Network will continue to access Sabre’s portfolio of innovative technology and its intelligent platform Sabre Red 360, allowing it to harness more data, content and flexibility to differentiate its offering from more than 420 airlines, 750,000 hotel properties, and hundreds of tour operators, rail, car and cruise providers. “Sabre’s global expertise, extensive knowledge and understanding of the dynamic global travel eco-system make it the partner of choice,” said Alan William, VP Air & Distribution Partnerships, dnata Travel. “We expect future collaboration on accelerated innovation, operational simplification and gains in digital user experience as a result of this expanded relationship.” Abdul Iyer, VP ME, Sabre Travel Network Middle East, said, “Our new agreement will deliver technology and solutions that fulfill latest industry trends such as NDC and virtual payments. dnata Travel has a strong strategy, and its roadmap to use the latest technologies to create a more personalised travel experience which aligns completely with the investments Sabre is making to help agents deliver a more seamless traveller experience.”

Sabre Corporation and Accor will be creating the first unified central reservation (CR) and property management (PM) platform for the global hospitality industry. The collaboration intends to develop a new full service property management capability and enrich its existing central reservation and limited service property management systems. These capabilities will combine within a new unified cloud-native, highly-flexible platform that will be built for and available to hoteliers across all property classes and geographic regions. In this context, Accor would be Sabre’s newest enterprise hospitality customer, adopting Sabre’s industry-leading SynXis Central Reservation System and, ultimately, the new global technology platform for all its hospitality brands and geographies. “We know our customers have historically had limited options in this area, and we are taking the lead to deliver the solutions that hoteliers have repeatedly told us they both want and need. Once developed, this offering will power a new generation of retailing, distribution and fulfillment solutions that will enable hotels to drive revenue growth beyond traditional sources and offer unique personalised services to their guests around the world,” said Sean Menke, President and CEO of Sabre Corporation. “Partners like Sabre are essential to helping us effectively leverage existing and new technology to further accelerate our net supply growth and lower costs for our hotel owners as well as for the Group,” said Sébastien Bazin, Chairman and CEO for Accor. “For Accor, the new technology will bring an opportunity to further and significantly enhance the Group’s core business activities including hotel distribution, guest recognition and owner relationships,” said Gilles de Richemond, Chief Information Officer, Accor. “We expect that the unified CR/PM platform will allow Sabre to better meet the needs of enterprise hoteliers …

Amadeus and Seera Group have strengthened their partnership to drive technology innovation in the region’s tourism sector. This follows a year of successful partnership between the two leading entities that led to significant digital transformation of travel and tourism services offered by Seera Group and helped enhance its all-round business efficiency. With the renewed partnership, Seera Group works closely with Amadeus to strengthen its online business further, integrating digital touch-points across all its operations, including its flagship corporate and government travel business, elaa. As the travel tech provider across Seera’s diverse portfolio of services, Amadeus brings cutting-edge innovation and state-of-the-art tech tools that enhance customer service standards and bring higher operational efficiency across the Group. In other highlights of the successful partnership, Amadeus is supporting Seera Group in expanding its omni-channel consumer travel business, Almosafer, across Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and beyond, in addition to the ongoing digitisation of booking services for corporate and government travel via elaa. Amadeus has been an ongoing strategic partner of Seera Group and has provided a host of technical support that helped consolidate the Group’s online business through tools such as Touchless that scaled up its efficiency of operations. Seera will implement the latest Amadeus solutions relating to hotel content, virtual credit card payment capabilities, fare optimisation solutions and content via NDC (New Distribution Capability) connectivity. The Group will also implement new products by Amadeus to enhance operational efficiency.

Requests for assistance for airline passengers with intellectual disabilities have seen an increase of 342 per cent in Middle East and Africa, following a 10-month long campaign to raise awareness of a dedicated Special Service Request (SSR) booking code by travel technology company, Travelport. SSR codes are used in the airline industry to communicate traveller preferences or needs to airlines. They are delivered through standardised four-letter codes defined by the International Air Transport Association (IATA). The DPNA SSR code can be used by travel agents, among others, to alert airlines when a passenger has intellectual or developmental disability and needs assistance.   As part of its campaign to raise awareness of the DPNA SSR code, Travelport has shared educational ‘sign-on alerts’ and graphical ‘prompts’ more than 10 million times with hundreds of thousands of travel agents across the world through Travelport Smartpoint, its flagship Point of Sale solution that is used by travel agents, among others, to search and book airline seats, hotel rooms and more. The digital media used to reach travel agents is typically sold by Travelport to travel providers, like airlines and hotels, as advertising space.   Mark Meehan, Travelport’s Global Vice President and Managing Director of Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, and Operators, said, “SSR codes play an important role in helping travel agents effectively and officially communicate the needs of travellers to IATA airlines, so it’s important agents are aware of the codes at their disposal and the kind of support that can be requested.”

Hotelbeds launches partnership with RateGain, the market leader in hospitality and travel technology solutions. RateGain will provide Hotelbeds with ‘Parity+’ – an advanced end-to-end rate integrity management solution that use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to track integrity issues in real time – to help identify for its hotel partners cases of opaque rates intended for offline channels being sold in other channels. Hotelbeds has chosen to work with RateGain following a competitive RFP to find the world’s leading third party provider of rate integrity technology and monitoring tools. Entering into this agreement forms part of Hotelbeds’ commitment to take on responsibility for leading the fight against rate integrity abuse on behalf of the owners of the 180,000 properties that it partners with. As part of this Hotelbeds has created a team dedicated to monitoring rates and invested in automated technology unavailable elsewhere in the market that uses data analytics to track travel sellers’ flows. More recently Hotelbeds has introduced comprehensive measures and technology solutions, including a strict ‘three strikes’ policy for channels that violate distribution rules; tools that allow full traceability of rates; and the data-driven segmentation of customer channels to more closely align them with the distribution strategies of hotel partners. Carlos Muñoz, Managing Director at Hotelbeds comments, “This year we have made significant progress in fighting rate integrity abuse on behalf of our hotel partners and I am pleased to confirm that incidences are now down to just 0.01%.”