Tag Archives: Travelport

Travelport has signed a new multi-year agreement with East West Travel Group, an Egypt-based travel agency. The East West Travel Group has over 30 years of operational experience, and specializes in corporate travel. The East West Travel Group has also now become the sole representative of BCD Travel in Egypt. BCD Travel is a leading global corporate travel management company with over 13,000 employees worldwide and total sales in 2015 of $25.4 billion. To mark the occasion Travelport sponsored a partnership event with East West Travel Group and BCD Travel in Egypt at the Baron Palace Garden, a historic attraction in the suburb of Heliopolis, Cairo. The event brought together some of the leading players from the Egyptian travel industry from the airline, hotel and government spaces.  The event was attended by His Excellency Mohamed Yehia Rashed, Egypt’s Minister of Tourism. As a result of the agreement, East West Travel Group and BCD Travel will now be able to access and utilize Travelport’s unrivalled travel content – including the branded fares and ancillaries from the world’s leading airlines and low cost carriers, as well as over 650,000 hotel properties, all from within the travel agent’s workflow. Travelport has established itself as a key technology partner in the Egyptian travel industry and today’s announcement with East West Travel and BCD Travel further reinforces Travelport’s brand awareness in the region.

Travelport and MasterCard have announced a new product to help airlines better understand their end travelers’ spend behavior. The product, Travelport Passenger Insight powered by Mastercard, allows airlines to improve their partnership strategies and create better offers to encourage travel on their respective routes.  Travelport Passenger Insight, the latest innovation from Travelport’s airline Business Intelligence team, analyses how, where, and when travellers spend in key spend categories — such as hotels, car rental, restaurants and retail — while traveling in a particular destination or country. Travelport Passenger Insight uses aggregated transaction data to give airlines up-to-date traveler insights and information. Airlines can choose two levels of travel related spend detail. The result is customized analytics specific to the airline customers’ profile and benchmarked against industry competitors.    This unique analysis of anonymised and aggregated spending data provides airlines with tailored insights into brand preferences and trends that can help attract and keep customers in key routes and markets.

Travelport, a leading Travel Commerce Platform providing distribution, technology, payment and other solutions for the global travel industry, announced the creation of a new organization, Travelport Digital, as part of its strategic focus on the fast-growing digital economy.  At the same time Travelport has appointed a Chief Customer and Marketing Officer, a newly created role that will further heighten Travelport’s focus on delivering a marketing leading customer experience. The new Travelport Digital organization will optimise the investments that Travelport has made into various digital assets and products over the past couple of years with the aim of growing Travelport’s range of digital services.  The formation of the function builds on Travelport’s acquisition last year of MTT, the leading provider of mobile and digital solutions to the travel industry, as well as its investment in Locomote, a corporate travel management system.  Bryan Conway, a seasoned Travelport executive has been appointed Head of Travelport Digital.

Travelport has announced the renewal of both its global full content and IT agreements with Emirates. The partnership will see Emirates offer Travelport connected agencies in 180 countries — serving hundreds of millions of travellers around the world continued access to all of Emirates’ fares and inventory through the Travel Commerce Platform. Furthermore, Travelport has signed an extension of its long-standing IT services agreement with Emirates. This agreement will see Travelport continue to provide Emirates with industry leading pricing, shopping and ticket rebooking technology, enabling Emirates to support advanced shopping and rebooking options within their internal sales channels including ww.emirates.com. On the distribution side, the new deal means Emirates will commence the initial rollout of Travelport’s airline merchandising solutions giving them the capability to directly promote their fare brands, ancillaries and associated upsell options — for the first time — to the global travel agent community. Joining approximately 170 airlines now live with Travelport’s merchandising solution (Rich Content and Branding), Emirates will benefit from Travelport’s ability to provide detailed product descriptions, including images and related ancillary options to travel agencies. Derek Sharp, Senior Vice President and Managing Director, Air Commerce, Travelport, commented that they are delighted to build on their strong partnership with Emirates through this enhanced global full content agreement as well as the renewal of their long standing IT agreement.  Emirates’ choice to offer agents their branded fares content with detailed descriptions and imagery will enable agents to more effectively upsell Emirates’ services providing an improved service to travellers and hopefully boosting Emirates’ growth across the globe.

Travelport and Roibek Travel have announced a new long term agreement that will see Roibek exclusively use Travelport’s industry leading technology across their 55 branches in the Kingdom. Travelport’s agency point of sale solution, Travelport Smartpoint, will give Roibek access to air and other travel content and services aimed at transforming the way agents work by maximising revenues, increasing productivity and improving the customer experience. Smartpoint also allows travel agents to sell not just air fares, but an airline’s full range of ancillary products and services in real time from over 400 of the world’s leading network airlines and low cost carriers. There are also more than 650,000 unique hotel properties and 36,000 car rental locations available from Travelport’s Travel Commerce Platform. Ibrahim El Mohandes, Country Manager, Saudi Arabia, Travelport commented; “Travelport is delighted to announce this business partnership with Roibek Travel. Our technology solutions are redefining how travel is being search, bought and sold across the globe and our Travel Commerce Platform creates synergies that facilitate revenue growth for our customers, which will empower Roibek’s growth online, increasing revenue as well as improving customer service for the Roibek’s customers.”

Leading travel commerce platform, Travelport recently hosted a congregation of Abu Dhabi’s leading travel agencies at a series of innovation workshops at the Travelport office in Beirut, Lebanon. Among the attendees were representatives from well-known travel agencies such as Asian Gulf Travel, Shams Abu Dhabi Travel, Al Badie Travel Agency, Al Dana Travel, Liberty Travel, Smart Travel and Latakia Travel. The workshop provided the platform for the agents to learn about leveraging the most innovative technology that is redefining travel commerce around the globe and how this technology can utilised to meet traveller demands and grow the UAE’s travel industry. Travelport is a key technology partner for the Abu Dhabi agents who were in attendance, all of whom have recently signed long term agreements with Travelport. The three-day workshop was an interactive gathering where Travelport’s product experts showcased technologies such as Travelport Smartpoint, the industry leading desktop solution, which can truly transform the way agents work; maximizing revenues, increasing productivity and improving the customer experience. They allow travel agencies to sell more airline content more often, allowing agents to keep up-to-date with the widest range of real-time content from over 400 of the world’s leading network airlines and low cost carriers, all from within their workflow. They can also upsell more hotel rooms and car rentals. There are more than 650,000 unique hotel properties and 36,000 car rental locations available from within Travelport Smartpoint, which essentially means that travel agents can be confident and efficient in offering the right choices for their customers’ unique needs. Matthew Powell, Regional Director, Middle East and South Asia, commented that in order for traditional travel agents to remain competitive they need to be ‘consultants’ …

The national airline of the UAE, Etihad has partnered with MTT, a Travelport company and provider of digital solutions to the airline industry, to launch a mobile application for iPhone users. The App enables guests to organise and manage their journey with even greater ease as the airline continues to adopt innovative technology to re-imagine the flying experience. Etihad Airways guests will enjoy 10 per cent off flights, and members of the airline’s loyalty programme Etihad Guest, will receive 250 bonus miles for every booking made through the mobile app before 30 May 2016. The Etihad Airways mobile app is simple and enjoyable to use, providing comprehensive trip management capabilities by leveraging the latest innovations in mobile technology. Guests can pay for their tickets by scanning their credit card and can also check in for their flight by using their mobile phone to simply scan their passport page. Boarding passes can be viewed from the app or downloaded directly to iOS Wallet.