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.)

The success of the Millennium Foundation’s innovative financing solution depends on creating a global movement. We hope that cooperation within the travel industry will be a model for other industries across the world.

The GDSs have a unique role to play. We provide a critical link to hundreds of millions of travellers - many of them with a global perspective and an appreciation of the challenges faced by those in developing countries.

Together, we issue more than 500 million airline tickets each year. This means that even a small percentage of participants could make a big difference in the lives of millions of people. We see the potential of this program to reduce child mortality and improve maternal health - saving lives on a massive scale.

This is a fitting role for the travel industry because mass travel is a powerful force for social and cultural awareness and understanding. The more people travel, the more connections they make with other lands and people, the more they recognize their roles as global citizens, and the more likely they are to take advantage of this new program to make a contribution and a difference.

The MASSIVEGOOD program will be rolled out in 2010, so stay tuned.

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.

The Black Swan: the Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007), by Nissam Nicholas Taleb.  The title comes from the assumption made in the 17th Century that all swans were white because it was the only color ever observed - until a species of black swans was discovered in Australia.  His message is we can’t predict important events simply based on past events or conventional assumptions.  He explores the way the brain and experience works, our innate optimism and our inability to read signs.

There’s a clear lesson here for business around the notion of asymmetric risk - in other words, risks that arise from wholly unexpected or unpredictable places, outside our normal range of experience and observation.  I used the book with Travelport’s senior leadership team last year as a way to encourage new thinking about the kinds of companies that could disintermediate our businesses.

Outliers: Stories of Success (2008), by Malcolm Gladwell, looks behind the secrets of success and finds interesting patterns that defy some of our long held notions of why some people succeed wildly (think Bill Gates) while others never quite seem to live up to their potential.  He finds individual merit has less to do with it than culture, community, upbringing, fortuitous timing and dogged persistence.  All the outliers he studied invested at least 10,000 hours of intense, focused effort to become expert in their area.

There are also two older books that have had a lasting influence on me.

The first is Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942), Joseph Schumpeter’s classic economic essay addressing the concept of capitalism driving innovation through “creative destruction,” a Darwinian view of markets.  This book has been particularly influential on me when I’ve managed mergers, re-engineering and outsourcing operations offshore.

The second is The Soul of a New Machine (1981), by Tracy Kidder.   I first read Soul when I joined Digital Equipment Corp. in 1985.  Kidder spent a year following a team of passionate engineers at Data General who were designing and building a new computer to compete with DEC’s products.  It shows how core technology development occurs, the risks, processes and personalities of complex system design, and the heated competition internally and externally in high tech corporations.  It emphasizes the extraordinary effort and passion individuals need to achieve breakthroughs.  It is also a poignant story.  Despite the quality of the product and the immense effort to overcome great odds, it didn’t succeed in saving Data General in the marketplace.

The book helped me understand that passion, focus and enormous hard work drive breakthroughs.  But I also learned that this passion and focus quickly dissipates in large organizations and in business-as-usual (non-crisis) environments.  As such, it’s important to set up small, empowered groups and inject a sense of urgency into their mission.

Regardless of what business or industry you’re in, there are great lessons in each of these books.  In a world as competitive as this one, we need all the insight we can get.

The challenges have never been greater.  The global economic crisis has deepened the needs of communities around the world.  Government can help by stimulating economic activity and reinforcing social safety nets.  But the scale of the problem is too great for government alone.  Communities also need the support of businesses and individual employees, working hand-in-hand with local organizations.

I saw a lot of that with our own employees over the holidays.  Many of them substituted community service projects for their traditional holiday celebrations.  Like employees at other companies, they identified a need and acted on it, contributing their own time and money.   They’re demonstrating that individuals and teams of employees – encouraged and supported by their companies – can have an enormous impact on community needs.

Corporate social responsibility, of course, requires more than a focus on immediate needs.  It has to be balanced between today and tomorrow.  Such key issues as sustainability, education and economic development require a long-term view and a long-term commitment – as well as long-term partnerships with other organizations and institutions.

Travelport has just released our first CSR report, which you can review by clicking here.  As a relatively new company, we’re just getting started in developing our programs, but we’re focusing on three areas where we believe we can make a difference.

Sustainability, in terms of how we operate our business and the steps we’re taking to reduce our energy consumption and carbon footprint.

Assistance for people in need, which extends from disaster relief and travel assistance to employee volunteerism.

Industry support and development, including sustainable travel and tourism and other efforts to support and grow the travel business.

With that framework, we’re now developing the goals and metrics that will drive our CSR efforts in the years ahead.   We’ll get more detailed in our reporting as time goes on and our CSR initiatives become firmly established across Travelport and the 40 countries where we have operations around the world.

We see CSR as an opportunity to make a contribution to our communities and our industry as well as to enhance our relationships with suppliers, agencies and other partners.  It’s really very simple.  Travelport’s success depends on a healthy and growing travel industry, and a healthy and growing industry depends on travel and tourism that is economically and environmentally sustainable.  The work that we do to support the strength and sustainability of our industry, our business and our communities is vital to the future of Travelport and the planet we all share.

Every week in this space you’ll find a new entry by senior management and industry experts at Travelport – on topics ranging from travel trends to technology to tourism and sustainability. There’s no shortage of issues and opinions in a dynamic industry that touches billions of people and generates more than $1.2 trillion in revenue globally each year.

Travelport is a relatively new company, formed in 2006 from the Travel Distribution Services assets of Cendant. You may be more familiar with our businesses, which include such well-known travel brands as Galileo and Worldspan, our global distribution systems, and GTA, a wholesaler of hotels, ground products and services. They have years of experience in travel services and the expertise to provide a well-informed perspective on the industry.

You’ll hear from me as well as from Gordon Wilson, president and CEO of Travelport GDS, Ken Esterow, president and CEO of GTA, Sue Powers, CIO of Travelport GDS, Mike Rescoe, the CFO of Travelport, and many others.

We hope to offer the insight that comes from our geographic diversity and our position at the intersection of travel supply and demand. We work with the leading content providers (airlines, hotels, car rental companies, rail companies and tour operations) as well as with the leading distributors (traditional travel agents, online travel agencies, travel management companies and corporations).

It’s an interesting place to be. An exciting place to be. From airlines to travel agencies and everything in between, the industry is undergoing unprecedented transformation and consolidation. (We’re one of the consolidators with our acquisition of Worldspan in 2007.) Technology is changing the economics of the industry as well as the ways companies and consumers buy and manage their travel. Emerging economies like China, India and the Middle East are creating new opportunities for growth. And the sustainability of travel and tourism – from carbon emissions to cultural preservation – is becoming a major economic and environmental challenge.

You could probably list a dozen other trends and challenges, and that’s the point of this blog. There’s a lot to talk about. We want to introduce you to Travelport and our global business and provide our take on the industry, and we invite you to share your thoughts and opinions with us. Your participation will help us keep it fresh and timely and interesting.

Like the best travel destinations, we want this to be a site you’ll visit again and again.