Interview for Arabian Travel Market Website

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  How can technology help travel agents better sell a region or sector?

  Global distribution systems (GDS’s) have become very effective sales and marketing platforms, supplying travel agents with targeted product information based on their customer’s needs. For example, through GDS advertising and programmes such as Sponsored Flights, an airline can direct agents toward special promotions and fares as they search for availability on a particular route. These functionalities help provide travel agents with useful information at the point of sale. Technology is helping travel agents better sell travel products in the non-air sector. Robust online portals such as Travelport Rooms and More consolidate hotel, rail and car rental products from thousands of suppliers around the world, facilitating price comparison and providing agents with more informed travel choice. The beauty of distribution technology is that it makes the aggregation of a vast amount of travel content possible, making side-by-side comparison that much easier. Social networking is a more recent phenomenon that is also helping facilitate access to travel product information. Several micro-sites targeting the travel trade community have appeared over the last couple of years that serve as a platform to share their personal opinions and experiences. This type of knowledge transfer is invaluable to the travel trade community and helps them better sell a particular travel product or destination.

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• What sectors have you seen investing in technology?

  The leisure sector in particular has been investing heavily in building its online presence. We are seeing online travel agencies (OTA’s) like Cleartrip boosting their metasearch and booking functionalities and extending their payment capabilities to cover major global currencies. Because of the rising popularity of these travel sites, leisure-focused offline agencies are realising that they must also boost the capabilities of their websites and ramp up their online offering. Meanwhile, Direct Marketing Companies (DMC’s) such as Kuoni and Orbitz are leveraging technology to consolidate their business models and several of them are integrating their platforms to reduce turnover and improve yields. It’s all about strategic consolidation right now and larger travel companies are using technology to boost yields and create efficiency through economies of scale. Apart from this, nearly everyone in travel is trying to see what they can do in the Mobile App space and developers are creating some pretty innovative applications. There is so much potential in this space right now and many players are looking at how they can deliver ‘touch and go’ products and services and integrate them with social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter. At Travelport, we launched a mobile travel itinerary application for iOS and Android this past year as we see this as the future.

• What changes have you seen in the travel Industry over the last 12 months?

  The travel agent’s desktop has evolved significantly over the past 12 months and is moving closer towards graphical user interface (GUI) and point and click functionality. Applications like Travelport’s Smartpoint are preparing Middle East travel agencies for the transformation of the desktop and the inevitable wide scale roll-out of the Universal Desktop, which last year began to replace the traditional green screen across select retail outlets of leading travel agencies such as Flight Centre. As was the case with Travelport and Flight Centre, travel retailers are partnering with technology companies in the early stages of product development to ensure that the solutions they create can be easily integrated into an agent’s workflow. As a result, product creation is becoming much more of a consultative process that allows agencies to test technology products before they are introduced on a wider scale. We’ve seen Managers become much more involved in assessing their agency’s technology requirements and ensure that the solutions they’ve adopted can be streamlined with their mid-back office. On the supplier side, global carriers such as Emirates have been enhancing their customers’ online shopping experience by deploying new repricing technology that is making it easy for customers to maintain control of their journey when changing travel plans. For example, Travelport’s Rapid Reprice solution has been integrated with Emirates’ “manage an existing booking” feature to allow passengers to change or cancel their itinerary 24x7 from any device that has an internet connection.

• What is the business outlook for 2012 and beyond and are you optimistic about the future?

  We are very optimistic about the future and believe that the general business outlook for 2012 in the Middle East is strong. Travel booking patterns remain favourable in this region and our customers are implementing technology and devising strategic plans to support their long-term growth. At Travelport, we are already making steady progress in delivering the broadest possible travel content for suppliers and travel agency customers to buy, sell and promote. We will continue the deployment of significant, innovative products, including point and click desktop application Smartpoint, online hotel portal Rooms and More, single connection aggregator uAPI and the next-generation Universal Desktop. This will therefore be a key year for us to advance the adoption of these solutions into the marketplace.