Travelport goes graphic to “redefine travel commerce”

Travelport is developing a new range of graphic solutions and adding more content in an effort to “redefine travel commerce”, an event in Bali has heard.

Addressing the company’s annual Asia Pacific Customer & Partner Conference, which is being held at the Grand Hyatt Bali this week, Jason Clarke, Travelport’s managing director for global sales, told delegates that the company is trying to “redefine the selling experience” by offering more graphic displays and extra content, both in the ‘Air’ and ‘Beyond Air’ sectors.

Clarke revealed that in the last 12 months, Travelport has rolled out 120,000 new desktop solutions. And these new products are, according to Clarke, “moving our customer base to a new selling experience”.

“Green screen served a purpose and allowed transaction to occur, [but] providers want different ways of marketing and merchandising their products,” Clarke said. “[We have now] moved to a more dynamic environment, mixing old commands with a new layout.”

The company said it has spent the last 12 months trying to “unify” the user experience for its two GDS systems, Galileo and Worldspan, while offering more content and ancillary products, as well as more tailored searches that don’t just focus on price.

Products like the new version of Travelport Smartpoint, Universal Desktop and Universal API are now offering new graphic interfaces for travel agents, while content agreements with low-cost carriers such as AirAsia, Ryanair and Tigerair are boosting the amount of content the company is able to provide. Thirty carriers have also signed up for the company’s ‘Rich Content & Branding’, which improves how airline products are displayed on the agents’ screen, with “significantly more” expected to be added in the coming months.

And Clarke said these airline deals were only made possible by Travelport’s new graphic display technology.

“Airlines told us they want us to market their products,” Clarke said, adding that offering the ability to sell ancillary services is now “one of our core investment platforms”.

This focus was highlighted by the fact that one of the keynote speakers at the conference was Azran Osman-Rani, CEO of AirAsia X. Prior to this year, both AirAsia and AirAsia X had always shied away from using GDS companies.

Away from the airline sector, Travelport also recently concluded the acquisition of Hotelzon, which will add 30,000 more hotel rooms to its existing inventory of 580,000. This forms part of a major push into the ‘Beyond Air’ segment for Travelport, and Clarke said it would utilise the same technologies in this area as it has done in the airline arena.

“[We are] taking some capabilities from the air side into hospitality, and then into car [rental],” he said.

In terms of its new display products, Travelport revealed that 89% of its customers in Asia Pacific are now using one or more of its new products – Smartpoint, Universal Desktop and Universal API – which marks the highest uptake of any region. It will also be expanding its mobile app for agents in future.

“We’re getting great feedback from both our agencies and provider customers,” Clarke said.