A lot has changed over at Travelport and when you look at the company compared to a decade it’s almost a completely new entity.
We caught up with the business’ General Manager for the Pacific, Kaylene Shuttlewood, to find exactly what the tech company has on offer for agents and how she sees it evolving in the coming years:
1. What’s new at Travelport?
In December, we rolled out a new version of Smartpoint, our award-winning travel agency point-of-sale solution. This new version features performance enhancements such as the ability for agents to search for hotels by vicinity using a full or partial address. This is something that cannot be achieved by travel agents working with traditional, ‘cryptic’ point-of-sale products, unless they leave their existing screens to search elsewhere for key information.
We’ve also integrated Smartpoint with a hotel bill-back solution using Virtual Account Numbers by eNett International. This enables a business traveller to stay at a hotel without having to pay their hotel bill on departure because the payment is arranged between the TMC and the hotel.
Finally, SeatGuru is now integrated with Smartpoint, which means that travel agents can quickly and easily access seat reviews without having to leave their booking flow, providing further opportunities for upselling and improved customer service.
We also took another step towards the mobile space with the purchase of MTT (Mobile Travel Technologies), the leading mobile travel commerce solutions provider. Adding MTT as an expanded capability to our existing travel commerce platform will extend our reach further as we extend this service to our airline, hotel, TMC and travel agency clients.
2. What has the response been to Travelport’s new initiatives?
The response to Smartpoint has been incredibly enthusiastic. From our functionality enhancements, agents have been commenting on the added value to the service they provide to their customers. In fact Smartpoint was voted the Best GDS in APAC by industry users for the 7th year running at the TTG Asia Awards. It feels great to be recognised for our technology.
3. How different is Travelport compared to a decade ago?
A decade ago, travel distribution mostly meant airfare distribution. Today, we have transitioned from a traditional GDS to a Travel Commerce Platform that is redefining the industry for our customers.
Since 2012, we have strategically invested approximately $760 million into our Travel Commerce Platform to address the trends, inefficiencies and unmet needs of all components of the travel value chain. This includes Air and Beyond Air, which include distribution and merchandising solutions for hotel, car rental, rail, cruise-line and tour operators, B2B travel payments, mobile solutions, advertising and an array of additional platform services.
4. Do you think there’s still some way to go before travel tech can provide full support for agents, airlines and other travel companies?
I believe Travelport have reached a point where we can say we are providing full support for agents, airlines and other travel companies via our Travel Commerce Platform. We have integrated all the important pieces but there will always be new developments, new technologies and new disruptors coming into the industry. There will always be ongoing work and effort to integrate new pieces that have come into the industry.
The intermediation model of the travel distribution industry is based on the principle of putting all components of the value chain together.
5. How do you predict their needs will change over the coming years?
The needs of our partners are driven by the changing preferences of their end customers – the travellers. The changing trends we can see with travellers is the increasing move to mobile technology. This move is not simply for the sake of making purchases on the go with mobile devices but rather a desire for personalisation.
Personalisation is only practical and achievable when there are choices and options, a one size fits all travel package is no longer the preferred option. We have been addressing this desire for the last few years with our Travelport Merchandising solution which allows the personalisation of an airfare purchase with various options, add-ons and ancillaries. This can be further enhanced by a wide selection of Beyond-Air products such as hotels, cars, rail, cruises and even local attractions.
As mentioned in the first question, Travelport’s acquisition of MTT will really enable us a step forward in this direction.
