Travelport’s UK regional director Simon Ferguson looks back at this year’s major developments and ahead to the major innovations coming up in 2013
We are now reaching the end of 2012 – what kind of year has it been for Travelport?
It’s been a strange year because of the Olympics and the jubilee – those have definitely had an impact, and the economy has continued its rather strange trajectory of low growth but high costs. It’s been a tough environment for the corporate traveller and the travel buyer. But we have seen some postives in our trading in the UK – volumes have been pretty steady and we’ve seen growth. I think that environment has challenged the TMC and buyer to be more flexible, inventive and creative. Those that have managed to do that have delivered some good results in what is still a pretty tough climate.
What kind of innovations have TMCs and buyers been using to combat the economic squeeze?
Many corporates now are considering a wider choice of accommodation. We are investing in hotels and hospitality, particularly through Travelport Rooms and More, which is where we bring the smaller fragmented hotel content into the market. Things like Hurricane Sandy challenge the TMC to be more responsive and flexible – for example we launched a product called Travelport Mobile Agent this year which allows you to access Galileo through a smartphone or iPad, which allowed many of our corporate sales consultants to be able to rebook people flexibly outside traditional hours and on mobile devices. The merger between the experience the business traveller and leisure traveller has continues apace. Twitter is a great source for airlines when they need to communicate with customers about delays etc. We put together a partnership with a company called Digital Visitor which is a social media agency with a platform that can be plugged into an agent’s website that allows travellers to post blogs, comments and videos. We started that in the leisure market but we see that offering great value in the business market as it will allow TMCs to offer a social media-style of communication with their end travellers. We plan to do this as we go forward into next year.
There has been a lot of discussion about the future of GDSs and other forms of distribution – what’s your view on this?
Fundamentally we want to be part of these new distribution methods – if you look at search in our Smartpoint application, you can now search the Travelport GDS by just typing in “I want to go from London to Barcelona on Christmas Day” and we will translate that into GDS code. We want to take the best of new distribution technology and add it into the GDS platform in that way we can allow TMCs to offer services to their customers. Efficiency and the ability to add value is critical in the corporate market for both the buyer and the end traveller. Smartpoint speeds up their workflow by a factor of 75 per cent as they use five times fewer keystrokes than if they were using a traditional GDS. By reducing the amount of time it takes the sales consultant to service that buyer, it means they can present them with more options and flexibility, including a different range of hotels, more quickly which will reduce their costs at the end of the day. We are bringing a wider range of content into the GDS than we’ve had before – we’re about to launch the ability to search low-cost airlines alongside scheduled airlines in a shopping process for the first time. Part of the future of the GDS is aggregating the content that you would expect to find in the open world and also using smart search techniques to make it quicker.
Is IATA’s New Distribution Capability a threat to companies such as Travelport?
It’s a concept around standardising the way that the industry and airlines distribute API-based content. That in itself is fine – we are supportive of standards, and coming up with standards which enable airlines to be able to maximise their marketing and merchandising. However it is purely conceptual and it’s very difficult to make a further comment at this stage.
What will be the key technology trends for Travelport going into 2013?
With Smartpoint, it’s making it easier and quicker for TMCs converting to the Travelport platform. When Statesman bought the Commodore business in June – we migrated Commodore over to Galileo in just than six weeks, which would not have been possible before. The whole process is becoming much quicker for both the TMC and the end traveller through the rolling out of Smartpoint and our Universal Desktop product, which are putting the balance of power back into the hands of the TMC and ultimately to the buyer as well, because they want all of that content, which has become fragmented, to be efficiently managed in one place. There will be more partnerships between us and TMCs – for example, we will be opening a major new service centre in the UK with Carlson Wagonlit which will open in June 2013.
Are your mobile services catching up with what the leisure travel sector offers in terms of apps and other online innovations?
I think we are catching up - for example within Smartpoint you can now do map searches, so a TMC can scroll over two points on a Google Map and see fares delivered for that trip, and we will be making that available through corporate booking tools as well. We want to give the maverick traveller the tools to make them feel that they are getting access to the type of experience that drives them to be a maverick in the first place - but through the TMC and travel policy channel. We have to give TMCs the tools to offer a flexible, fluid and responsive service. But there will always be some mavericks who think they can do things better.
I think the Travelport Developer Network is key for this because of the way that we can quickly provide those sorts of experiences by partnering with innovative third parties. These are people who can produce better mobile destination guides and social media than we can. We partner with them and take them into the Travelport platform, which helps to provide a better experience to TMCs and end travellers.