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. Read more »
Jeff Clarke
Jeff Clarke is Chief Executive Officer and President of Travelport and serves as a Director on the Travelport Board of Directors, appointed in May 2006. He also serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Orbitz Worldwide.
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In reading articles about the distribution of travel services, it’s not uncommon to come across the phrase “traditional GDS.” In a 21st Century context, “traditional” suggests the old way of doing things – more Betamax than Blu-ray. Although I don’t think this is actually true of the modern GDS and the advanced technology that drives our business, it’s a reminder that the future of our industry depends on more than the scale and presence the GDSs have today. We have to evolve to meet the growing and changing needs of our customers, and this means changing some of the ways we have traditionally done business.
The travel industry today is no different than any other industry; it is driven by an explosion of information, new and more flexible technologies, and an almost insatiable demand from companies and consumers alike for rich and varied content, presented in a way that enables them to make an informed travel choice. This is driving significant change for our suppliers and customers, and GDS providers need to be equally if not more fleet of foot in anticipating their needs, delivering services ahead of the curve and doing so in an open environment.
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Gordon Wilson
Gordon Wilson is Deputy CEO of Travelport and President and CEO of Travelport GDS, responsible for its global activities across 160 countries. Travelport GDS is a provider of next-generation IT solutions for airlines worldwide, as well as innovative data intelligence solutions for airlines and other companies that rely on travel industry intelligence for growth and success.
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It wasn’t long ago that various pundits were proclaiming the death of the dinosaur Global Distribution Systems (GDS) and declaring that the Internet would replace us all. But for all the success of travel “supplier.com” sites – and they have had some considerable impact on GDS volumes – consumers have demonstrated that they still want choice.
I don’t mean to suggest that there isn’t room for improvement in the GDS model, particularly in how we provide and present content to travel agents, corporate travel managers and other users and I’ll address some of these improvements in upcoming blogs.
Most consumers do not consider that they will receive an unbiased selection of all the travel options available when they go to a web site which is branded to a particular supplier. And they would be right. There was a tendency some time ago for consumers to believe that the only place they would see a travel supplier’s lowest price was on the branded web site of that supplier. However, through what are known as “full content deals”, the GDS industry has largely contracted with the vast majority of airlines and indeed hotel chains to ensure that all publicly available fares, seats or rooms are shown through the channels using the GDS. These channels include all of the major Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) as well as the high street leisure agencies and business travel management companies. Read more »
Gordon Wilson
Gordon Wilson is Deputy CEO of Travelport and President and CEO of Travelport GDS, responsible for its global activities across 160 countries. Travelport GDS is a provider of next-generation IT solutions for airlines worldwide, as well as innovative data intelligence solutions for airlines and other companies that rely on travel industry intelligence for growth and success.
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For all the pain they cause, economic downturns tend to get companies very focused on how to operate and grow more efficiently. Adversity has a way of getting us back to the basics and spurring creativity and innovation. Companies look for a competitive advantage that will accelerate their growth when the economy rebounds . . . for ways to leverage technology to serve customers in an uncertain environment . . . and for solutions to protect their revenue.
It’s certainly true here at Travelport. In the midst of a global downturn in travel, we’re looking at both the internal challenge (how to improve our own efficiency) and the external challenges (how to help our customers operate more efficiently as well as retain and attract customers).
Among other things, we’re in the final stages of consolidating our two data centers into a single data center. This will enable us to save money, increase energy efficiency and provide higher service levels for our customers. That’s important in any economic environment, but it’s especially important right now. Read more »
Jeff Clarke
Jeff Clarke is Chief Executive Officer and President of Travelport and serves as a Director on the Travelport Board of Directors, appointed in May 2006. He also serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Orbitz Worldwide.
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Every good and not so good website these days needs to have social networking functionality. From LinkedIn to Naymz and YouTube to MySpace, we are being encouraged, nagged and bullied into participating in an ever-widening array of networking opportunities. The internet gives people who are addicted to people a helping hand.
No more so than in travel, it appears. Travellerspoint, Travelmole, Travelistic, Trip Tie; Trip Up; 43 Places, Trip Hub, Where are you now (WAYN), Trip Connect, Dopplr, TripIt, Driftr. Add your own favourite, the list isn’t exhaustive. And this is before the hotels and holidays rating services being used by online travel agents and some travel meta-search engines.
TripAdvisor is owned by Expedia, for example, and Trip Up was acquired in July 2007 by SideStep. So what is it about these sites that appeals so much that these serious businesses are willing to spend serious money?
My first response to Web 2.0 functionality is (typically) one of cynicism. The cynic in me says that users are either people with too much time on their hands; or are not users at all, but were arm-twisted into signing up to something that then gains little or fleeting participation from them. There’s also the suspicion that the value of many social networking sites is disproportionately borne by the readers of material, rather than the writers of it. For instance if I give a poor rating for a lousy business hotel, I get little more than a momentary diminution of stress – while the reader of my rant avoids the hotel in question, a much larger gain. Read more »
Paul Holliday
Paul Holliday is a Strategy Analyst with Travelport.
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