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TTG Toolkit TECHNOLOGY 30


This week in your toolkit Training


Marketing Magic Industry leaders talk strategy, package prices and consumer trends for the Olympic year at a Cimtig debate p27


Get Ahead


Why we must not neglect young apprentices, says Training for Travel p28


Win a UK break with Haven Holidays and catch up with Cox & Kings and Your Car Hire p30


Mystery Shopper An online retailer beats agents in Belfast to a £3,500 Floridian villa booking p32


32 team toolkit


Got any business-related issues you’d like TTG to cover? Email toolkit@ttgdigital.com


Taking the easy route to bookings


With three new developments to simplify agents’ work, Travelport represents the future of booking travel. Daniel Pearce finds out more at its Atlanta office


I


magine viewing your friends on Facebook – and clicking on one in another country, or another part of the UK, that


you would like to visit. Then sit back as a travel agent-


Matthew Parsons 020 7921 8015


24


Pippa Jacks 020 7921 8038


09.02.2012


Katherine Lawrey 020 7921 8018


Carlie Trotter 020 7921 8004


sponsored application instantly calls up an itinerary for you to visit them via air or rail – and then you move through the instant app to make a travel purchase. This sort of functionality is just one example of the many technological innovations being developed by Travelport. Better known to you or I as the technology business which owns the Apollo, Galileo and Worldspan GDSs (global distribution systems), Travelport employs more than 3,500 people with offices in more than 40 countries, and reported revenue of $2.3 billion in 2010. Yet much of what Travelport does is built on a very simple objective: to make the selling processes and systems of travel sellers, from large chains to smaller independents, more efficient and easier to use – enabling agents to sell more travel. The nascent Facebook app was one of a number of new developments showcased at a Ekert: plans to “blow away the marketplace”


recent press event in Atlanta where the business has a base secondary to its global HQ at Langley, Berkshire. After investing more than half a billion dollars in new development in the past five years it certainly has a thing or two to show off.


One-stop-shop system Take the Universal Desktop, a simple- to-use agent booking platform which enables agents to sell air, rail, car hire and hotels through a simple one point-and-click system.


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