Travelport inspires and empowers travel agencies and developers to ‘try before they buy’.
Travelport recently launched an innovative new demonstration site to showcase its Universal API capabilities. The tool allows both commercial decision makers within travel agencies and developers to fully explore the content and functionality available from Travelport before making decisions about how they would like to develop their own products.
The Demo site, which launched in early January 2015, provides travel developers with the tools and data to offer consumers much richer information. This in turn enables Travelport to help our airlines and other suppliers retail their products more effectively and allows our customers to offer their travellers the very best content.
Initially, the Demo site offered basic air and hotel shopping functionality. It has now been updated to include a new array of air shopping capabilities, including an airline’s branded fares, ancillary content from low cost carriers and interactive seat maps. Other additions include the ability to display the most relevant results simply, on one or two pages, and the integration of a price point solution that allows a user to choose different flight combinations that are available for the same total price.
In the future, Travelport plans to add car shopping to show how easily Travelport Universal API can be used to sell car rental and to further augment the site by including data from Hotel Content Plus for a more expansive hotel display.
The site demonstrates Travelport’s complete offering and is designed to inspire those looking to build their own website, booking tools, apps or other products on Travelport’s open platform.
Alvydas Vitkauskas, General Manager of UAB “Interneto Partneris”, managing European online travel agencies FlyHi, FlySiesta, HotFlug and Greitai commented: “Developing a new digital product such as a corporate booking tool or website is inherently risky. The more you can understand and control the risks, the better placed you are to make commercially viable decisions. With Travelport’s new Universal API Demo site, you can fully investigate the type of content and connectivity available before launching your project and that is absolutely invaluable.”
Roberto Ramos, Atrapalo’s Travel General Manager commented: “We are currently in the process of migrating our GDS driven air booking engine to Travelport Universal API. Initially, the estimated time for completion was six months but by simulating and testing the capabilities on offer with Travelport’s new Universal API Demo Site we were able to cut down development times by half.”
Jan-Paul Ephithite, Travelport Product Manager, commented: “We are really excited about our new Universal API Demo site and in particular the new updates showcasing Travelport’s overall offering and unrivalled content, including branded fares and ancillaries and seat maps. We have been working hard to display Travelport Universal API in an innovative way and visited multiple sites before we decided on our current design. We sought to build a platform on which a customer could get a comprehensive overview of the necessary information that they need to make a more informed travel choice. With our newly updated Demo site we are hoping to inspire those looking to differentiate themselves in the travel industry.”
Travelport and Sindbad announce new agreement
Also, Travelport has announced it has signed a new, long term, global agreement with Sindbad, one of Russia’s largest online travel agencies. Sindbad has been operating since 1995 and specialises in selling air tickets.
Today’s announcement extends the existing relationship and creates a firm foundation for future commercial successes. Sindbad will connect to Travelport’s Travel Commerce Platform via its Universal API and receive access to an array of travel content, including network and low cost carriers, branded fares and ancillary services.
Rashid Velemeev, Co-Owner and General Manager, Sindbad commented: “We are pleased to have renewed our agreement with Travelport and look forward to maximising our growth opportunities by utilising the company’s impressive content, technology and solutions. Expanding our cooperation with Travelport is an important part of our overall strategy as we look to evolve our online sales presence and enhance our Sindbad.ru website further with the innovative uAPI solution. This powerful tool allows us to bring new efficiencies when handling complex air bookings from different content sources.”
Maria Yakushkina, Travelport’s Country Manager in Russia commented: “We are thrilled with this new agreement and look forward to assisting Sindbad in providing its customers with better service, greater choice of travel content and increased merchandising opportunities.”
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
