Travelport is at its core a travel technology company. It takes world-class information technology to manage 15,000 messages a second, process more than 1 billion transactions on peak days and provide critical reservations systems and operations support for our airline customers. During the past two years we’ve invested more than $500 million in our transaction processing capabilities.

It’s gratifying, then, when an independent organization recognizes the work we do. InformationWeek magazine recently ranked Travelport No. 11 on its InformationWeek 500 for our innovative use of information technology. This is a prestigious list because it doesn’t just look at what companies spend on information technology - it looks at how innovative they are in using IT to serve customers and grow their businesses. (You can see the 2009 rankings by clicking here.) I’m proud to say that Travelport had the only GDS ranked in the Top 250. Continue »

It’s not often that the leading players in a highly competitive industry come together behind a common cause. But sometimes the opportunity to make a difference in our world is so profound that the decision to act collectively is an easy one.

Travelport recently joined with our GDS competitors, Sabre and Amadeus, to support the Millennium Foundation for Innovative Finance for Health, which supports the work of UNITAID in its global mission to combat such life-threatening diseases as HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in developing countries.

Through a Millennium Foundation initiative called MASSIVEGOOD, our three companies will offer travellers a convenient and secure way to give back through a simple voluntary donation of $2, €2, £2 or more. The contribution process will be built into our point of sale applications and will be available whether travellers book online or through a travel agent. (Click here to view a video that explains more.) Continue »

Earlier this year, business travel became the subject of political criticism in the U.S. While the focus of this criticism was travel by companies that had received emergency federal assistance, the effect was to raise questions about business travel overall - at a time when companies were already cutting back on travel in the face of a global economic recession.

The travel industry argued at the time that business travel is an important stimulus of economic activity that should be encouraged, not discouraged. (See my earlier blog on the subject here.) Now, a new report sponsored by the U.S. Travel Association (USTA) and the Destination & Travel Foundation shows just how important business travel is to growth and productivity.

The study, conducted by the global research firm Oxford Economics, determined that every dollar invested in business travel results, on average, in $12.50 of increased revenue and $3.80 of new profits. This is in addition to the $246 billion in spending and 2.3 million jobs generated annually by business travel in the U.S., according to the USTA. Continue »

Summer is a big time for reading lists, usually focused on lively page-turners for the beach.  But it’s also a good time to catch up on books about business, management and new ways of looking at our rapidly changing world.  So, with the summer winding down, I wanted to recommend a few books - both new and old - that have influenced the way I think about business and management.

A good place to start is with the latest book by Wired editor Chris Anderson, Free: the Future of a Radical Price (2009).   Its thesis is that in a digital world, price is rapidly falling to zero.  The new world he describes is the digital equivalent of the Gillette model of selling razors at a loss and making money on the blades.  We’re seeing this with everything from software to photo sharing and editing sites, where online businesses attract customers with free basic services and make money on more feature-rich premium services.  It’s a model engrained in those under 30, who are accustomed to getting their information for free.

A good example is the recent decision by online travel companies (OTC) like Orbitz Worldwide to eliminate booking fees.  For a decade, the OTCs believed they needed to charge consumers to book flights in order to make money.  The fees had the effect of leading many consumers to find a flight on the OTC but book it on the airline’s own Web site.  Since eliminating booking fees, more consumers are booking their flights through the OTCs.  At Orbitz Worldwide, for example, air transaction grew 22 percentage points in the second quarter compared to the first quarter of 2009, when fees were still in place. Continue »