As part of the agreement, Travelport will continue to provide IATI with its online expertise and technology solutions including the Travelport Smartpoint agency desktop and the Travelport Universal API.
IATI – Turkey’s leading all-online travel systems integrator – and Travelport, leading distribution services and e-commerce provider for the global travel industry, have renewed their partnership with the signing of a new multi-year agreement.
The new deal will see IATI significantly increase its business volume with Travelport as it continues to benefit from Travelport’s global and regional industry expertise and cutting edge products.
As part of the agreement, Travelport will continue to provide IATI with its online expertise and technology solutions including the Travelport Smartpoint agency desktop and the Travelport Universal API – the leading edge technology that enables travel agencies to streamline the booking process by re-aggregating currently fragmented content from the GDS and other sources. Travelport Universal API also enables full access to Travelport’s air, hotel and car content, as well as High Speed Rail suppliers and Low Cost Carriers.
“To keep up with the pace of the ever developing travel industry, an effective collaboration between partners is becoming more important every day,” said Levent Aydin, General Manager, IATI. “Travelport understand our business, share our ambitions and have the right expertise, technology tools and support structure to meet all of our current and future requirements. We believe this successful collaboration will benefit our customers for years to come.”
“Travelport has a long history in Turkey spanning over 20 years and supporting travel providers such as IATI in this fast changing and dynamic industry is a key objective for us,” said Rabih Saab, President and Managing Director, Africa, Middle East and South Asia, Travelport. “We look forward to working very closely with IATI to share our online expertise and industry-leading technology solutions to enable them to make the most of every opportunity now and in the future.”
Avianca Partners with Travelport to Become Latin America’s First Major Airline
Travelport and Avianca have entered into a new distribution partnership that will see Avianca become the first major carrier from the Latin America region to adopt the GDS provider’s industry-leading Travelport Rich Content and Branding, a key component of the Travelport Merchandising Platform.
Through the new distribution agreement, Avianca will leverage the Rich Content and Branding component of the Travelport Merchandising Platform in order to market and retail their products more effectively through customization of product display and content.
Carlos Duran, VP of Marketing and Sales Avianca, commented: “Participating in Travelport’s merchandising platform will allow us to customize our product display and content within the latest version of Travelport Smartpoint, the industry-leading travel agency point-of-sale application. This provides enhanced functionality which allows Avianca to include product descriptions, images and branding information for eligible itineraries via Travelport Smartpoint.”
Since launching in 2011, Travelport Smartpoint has been adopted by more than 110,000 travel agents worldwide. The success of the application is its ability to offer users a blend of graphical and cryptic user interaction alongside a range of time-saving features: improving the agent user experience, reducing training costs, and speeding up the reservation process.
This agreement builds on two previous agreements between the two companies which provides Travelport-connected travel agents (Galileo, Apollo and Worldspan) with complete, global access to the group’s best fare inventory; and a technology services agreement providing Travelport Rapid Reprice™ across multiple distribution channels, fully automating the manual process of repricing and reissuing airline tickets when passenger itineraries change.
“We’re delighted to build upon our existing partnership with Avianca, and to see this industry-leading carrier become our first Rich Content and Branding airline participant in the Latin America region,” said Christopher Engle, Travelport’s vice president of Global Distribution Sales & Service, Americas.
“This agreement makes clear Travelport is executing its merchandising strategy: to enable airlines to distribute their fares and ancillary content in a manner they choose; to do so through the travel agency channel and; to do it in a way that protects the integrity and efficiency of the GDS booking and management process for travel agents.”
Photo caption (from the left): Assita Kone, Hospitality Business Development Manager, Travelport; Loretta Bouchedid- Business Development Manager (Levant and Turkey), Travelport; Levent Aydin, General Manager, IATI, Jennifer D’Souza, Regional Commercial Director (Gulf, Levant, Pakistan and Turkey), Travelport.
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
