Will Owen-Hughes, Senior Director Air Commerce, Middle East and Africa, Travelport.
South African carrier takes advantage of Travelport’s cutting edge merchandising solutions to enable travel agents worldwide to book ancillaries including paid seats and excess baggage.
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA – Travelport, a leading Travel Commerce Platform, announced the launch of new ancillary products from South African Airways to agents across the world. Travelport’s connected travel agents can now select and purchase South African Airways paid seats and excess bag options in advance, using Travelport Smartpoint, Travelport’s industry-leading desktop point of sale as well as via Travelport’s Universal API (uAPI) which is available to other travel players, such as online travel agencies.
The airline’s ancillaries are powered by Travelport’s industry leading merchandising solution, Rich Content and Branding, a highly progressive technology which enables airlines to control how their fares are visually presented on travel agency screens, bringing them more in line with the airline’s own website experience. Using rich and graphical product descriptions, the solution allows airlines to implement innovative retailing techniques to drive sales of ancillary products as well as deliver tailored offerings to specific travel agencies in targeted geographic regions.
A growing airline trend, global airline ancillary revenue for 2015 reached over $52bn and has grown 21% annually since 2010, making airlines motivated more than ever to unbundle their ancillary services and make them available to be pre-booked by travel agents. These needs are successfully fulfilled by Travelport’s technology which leads the industry in enabling airlines to effectively differentiate their offering through the indirect channel, regardless of which point-of-sale our customers use.
Tlali Tlali spokesperson at South African Airways, commented: “We are very happy to announce the addition of these services to our agreement with Travelport. This move is a key component of our strategy to continuously innovate and provide customers with greater choice, meeting the increasing demand of travel ‘personalisation’ from the end traveller.”
Will Owen-Hughes, Senior Director Air Commerce, Middle East and Africa, Travelport added: “We are very pleased that South African Airways has expanded its use of our industry leading merchandising technology to include such important ancillary options which can now be booked by our 68,000 travel agency customers across 180 countries worldwide. This move once again demonstrates how Travelport’s merchandising solutions are delivering greater choice and revenue opportunities for both airlines and travel agents.”
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
