Travelport chose this year’s CAPA Aviation Summit to announce new initiatives and to celebrate a major milestone in relation to its airline merchandising technology. Launched exactly three years ago at the CAPA Aviation Summit in Dublin, Travelport’s suite of merchandising products has continued to go from strength to strength and is setting Travelport apart from its peers in the distribution channel.
The Merchandising Suite comprises three components, designed to help transform the way airlines deliver and display their products to travel agents:
- Aggregated Shopping integrates, in the same selling screens, shopping results for carriers who deliver their data through traditional means such as ATPCo and those with whom Travelport has a direct Application Programming Interface (API) connection.
- Ancillary Services enables travel agents to sell to their customers the ever increasing range of airline ancillaries, such as checked baggage, premium seats, fast track security access, lounge passes and so on, directly through the Travelport point of sale.
- Travelport Rich Content and Branding, including Fares Families, allows airlines to more effectively display their full range of products for sale in the intermediary channel in line with how they sell on their own websites. This includes detailed product descriptions and imagery, optional or ancillary products for sale and the ‘bundles’ offered in each of their fare families.
As of today, 150 airlines are now live with Travelport Rich Content and Branding. Travelport has added over 100 airlines since the start of 2015, demonstrating the value they see in Travelport’s technology as an aide to drive additional revenues per seat and to detail the differentiated products and services they offer, which the traditional ‘green screen’ GDS cannot do effectively.
Lufthansa Rich Content and Branding
Recent examples of how airlines are displaying their tailored offers for travel consultants to search, sell and book include:
- Air India, which is allowing UK-based travel agents the chance to offer customers booking business class flights a limo service to the airport
- TAM Airlines, which is offering its economy customers in the UK the chance to pay to use the British Airways’ business class lounge at London Heathrow’s Terminal 3
In the past few weeks, Travelport has announced that carriers such as British Airways, Iberia, SAS and JetBlue have all joined the roster of airlines around the globe using Rich Content and Branding including Fares Families.
Celebrating Travelport’s achievements in airline distribution at CAPA’s Airlines in Transition Summit in Dublin, Derek Sharp, Travelport’s Senior Vice President and Managing Director for Air Commerce, said: “We are delighted to be celebrating such a major milestone in the evolution of Travelport’s airline merchandising technology, where we now lead the industry by a considerable margin. To reach 150 airlines enabled with Travelport Rich Content and Branding including Fares Families is a fantastic achievement.
“However we are not resting on our laurels. We are listening attentively to our airline customers and their changing needs in the distribution of their products while ensuring that our travel agency customer efficiency remains optimised. The new developments that enable personalised, tailored offers to individual corporations and travel agencies illustrate the further execution of our strategy to change our relationship with airlines to deliver higher value.”
