Industry-first Web application changes the travel distribution landscape for Air Canada, travel agencies and travelers looking for the best of all worlds - in one location
ATLANTA, June 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Travelport GDS has introduced a travel industry merchandising first and technology leap forward for Air Canada® with the full market launch of Travelport Agencia™ a revolutionary travel booking solution that delivers access to the complete portfolio of Air Canada products in a seamless manner to users of Travelport’s Apollo GDS.
(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20090610/NY30340 )
Travelport Agencia enables travel agencies to not only display and book all of Air Canada’s fares families (including Tango, Tango Plus, Latitude, and Executive Class) with real time access to price and availability, but also to book any service from the Air Canada a la carte menu. These services include among others, lounge access, pre-paid on board cafe vouchers, checked baggage and seat assignment. Furthermore, users of Travelport Agencia are able to utilize the Air Canada Flight Pass program, which is a special Air Canada offering of pre paid electronic one way flight credits which consumers and corporate customers can draw down upon as required. Additionally, travel agencies in Canada using this product can compare and contrast the Air Canada product for domestic, US transborder and international journeys originating in Canada with the existing offerings made by the other airlines who participate in Travelport.
Travelport is the only GDS company to have brought such a rich blend of traditional airline content (pricing and availability) with the new manner in which Air Canada wishes to sell its products (fares families, a wide range of optional services) together into one user experience for the travel agency community. In the coming months the same capability is being added to Travelport’s own corporate online booking tool, Traversa™, deployed with companies such as IBM.
“What differentiates Travelport Agencia in the market is the efficient aggregation of Air Canada’s full range of a la carte products that until now sat outside the GDS, requiring inefficient business practices for travel agencies as they had to work around this limitation” said Travis Christ, president and managing director, Travelport GDS for the Americas. “We remain the only GDS to provide any solution with the capability to merchandise Air Canada’s full product offerings or modify bookings. Other solutions may bring together GDS and non GDS products but they do so via screen scraping which doesn’t provide the full view of fares, nor the efficiency and functionality that travel agents require today.”
According to Gordon Wilson, CEO for Travelport GDS, “Travelport Agencia is the first delivered illustration of the way in which Travelport is investing in its products for on-line and off-line travel agencies and corporations to handle the changing manner in which airline (and hotel and car rental) services are being packaged and sold. The learnings of this very positive engagement with Air Canada have been built into our plans for the Travelport Universal Desktop™ which will begin global roll out in 2010. It will take to a new level the ability of airlines, hoteliers, car rental companies and travel agencies in the 160 countries in which we operate, to change fundamentally the manner in which travel products are displayed, offered, priced and booked for consumers in the channels where consumers want to see choice.”
“Air Canada is pleased to partner with our technology partner Travelport on this important merchandising solution and provide our agency partners with the most advanced solution for booking our flights and services via their Apollo GDS, harnessing the power of Air Canada’s next generation ac2u™ platform,” said Graham Wareham, senior director product distribution for Air Canada. “Today’s announcement marks the successful completion of a very close and ongoing collaboration with Travelport to develop a comprehensive, user-friendly solution that meets Air Canada’s merchandising requirements with the travel trade and corporate travel buyers. Travelport listened to what we wanted to achieve and then worked hand in glove with us on the development. Their Galileo subscribers now have a powerful, automated tool that helps them enhance their productivity and customer service, by offering the full range of Air Canada product features, in addition to qualifying for all elements of their Air Canada incentive program and the newly announced Tango cash reward.”
“CWT Harveys Travel has worked extensively with Travelport on the development and fine-tuning of Agencia as a beta customer and we’ve found that it improves efficiency and substantially cuts processing time,” said Stephen Outerbridge, president, CWT Harveys Travel. “We are pleased that Travelport saw the challenge that Air Canada merchandising presented to the Canadian market and have provided a capability that allows us to offer all Air Canada content to our customers while managing our efficiency and operational costs. We especially appreciate the fact that our agents earn productivity segments for booking Air Canada. We have ordered Agencia for all of our Travelport workstations.”
Note to Editors:
Agencia eliminates the need for Canadian travel agents to shop multiple sources, saves them time and builds maximum efficiency into the booking process. Agents have the same content as they do through Air Canada’s Web site, but with the value of GDS integration creating a more all-encompassing shopping experience.
They are able to shop, price and book Air Canada’s Web content, including paid seat selection, as well as a la carte options, such as meal vouchers and more. Agents can also modify or cancel flights booked through Agencia and enjoy automatic updates to their Galileo Booking
Files. Agencia also integrates with Galileo Agency Private Fares and ATPCO private fares to ensure private and negotiated fares are incorporated into every shopping request.
Access to Air Canada’s internal system is enabled through an interface between the Galileo GDS and Air Canada’s next generation platform, ac2u ™. All bookings through Agencia create a single PNR containing both traditional GDS and Air Canada content.
Travelport Agencia is available on a subscription basis to subscribers of the Galileo GDS. Agencies can learn more by contacting their Travelport representative or by visiting: http://www.travelport.com/Global%20Repository/Products%20and%20Services/Travelport%20Agencia.aspx
About Travelport
Travelport is one of the world's largest travel conglomerates offering broad based business services to companies operating in the global travel industry. The company is comprised of the global distribution system (GDS) business that includes the Worldspan and Galileo brands; GTA, a leading global, multi-channel provider of hotel and ground services; IT Services and Software, which hosts mission critical applications and provides business and data analysis solutions for major airlines. With 2008 revenues of $2.5 billion, Travelport operates in 160 countries and has over 5,500 employees.
Travelport also owns approximately 48% of Orbitz Worldwide (NYSE: OWW), a leading global online travel company.
Travelport is a private company owned by The Blackstone Group, One Equity Partners,
Technology Crossover Ventures and Travelport management.
About Air Canada
Air Canada and Air Canada Jazz operate more non-stop flights within Canada and to the United States than any other airline. Between Europe and Canada, Air Canada operates up to 26 flights daily on 20 routes to nine European destinations from seven airports in Canada, including seasonal routes. Within Canada, the carriers operate more than 1,000 non-stop flights per day on 131 routes to and from 63 airports. Between Canada and the United States, the carriers operate more than 440 non-stop flights per day on 92 routes to and from 55 U.S. and seven Canadian destinations - the most of any carrier between Canada and the United States.
More information about Air Canada is available at: www.aircanada.com
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