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Posted Oct 20, 2011
Travelport announced a "joint product development agreement" with existing partner TravelSky Technology Limited of China. Travelport for years has provided to TravelSky airline technology, including e-ticket and interline systems, but now it will jointly develop technology with an entity not known for innovation.
A Chinese state-controlled firm, TravelSky provides reservations and departure control systems for Chinese airlines and operates the only global distribution system currently licensed to issue tickets in that country.
Posted Sept 28, 2011
Travelport's parent company extended until close of business Thursday the deadline for certain lenders to vote on the debt restructuring program that we covered here in The Beat. If it does not gain the support of its creditors for the plan, the company may seek Chapter 11 protection. To expedite that if it were to occur, the company simultaneously is seeking support for a consensual plan of reorganization. According to a customer letter from chairman and CEO Gordon Wilson, this finance activity does not affect customers.
Posted Aug 5, 2011
As CEO of Northwest Airlines from October 2004 through October 2008, Doug Steenland oversaw a carrier that embraced new distribution technologies and helped change the economic model to the benefit of airlines. Effective this week, he's sitting on the board of Travelport, a GDS operator that presumably would prefer to forestall another round of upheaval.
Posted Jul 29, 2011
A Texas district court this week denied Travelport's request to dismiss American Airlines' antitrust suit, which since its original filing has grown to also include Sabre as a defendant. Though it will proceed, the suit won't move as quickly as AA would like, as the judge also denied the carrier's request to expedite proceedings.
Posted Jul 20, 2011
After more than 50 years in the airline and travel industries, Travelport GDS vice chairman Robert Coggin will retire in August.
Posted Jun 24, 2011
I am now going to shift gears away from online technology and the role that they play in the travel distribution ecosystem to a topic that I have been personally intrigued with since I wrote my first book on Global Distribution Systems in 1999. That topic is GDS marketshare.
As background: Last week, I wrote a blog post that made an erroneous statement about Travelport being the biggest in the US. Rival Sabre quickly corrected me, but would not provide me with statistics to prove their claim. Notice I say "would not," not "could not."
Sabre will be happy to know that I have since corrected that article after verifying the information with Travelport, but decided to write a new blog today on the GDS share topic to augment the correction.
Posted Jun 23, 2011
Travelport named former British Airways executive Ian Heywood head of strategic planning for global supplier services, a new position. Tasked with coordinating Travelport's four regional supplier relations leaders, Heywood is responsible for "execution of the company's global vision and strategy for its air, rail and cruise supplier customers."
Posted Apr 8, 2011
Posted Apr 5, 2011
In response to Monday's announcement about Expedia and American Airlines coming to terms on a Direct Connect solution to be powered by a GDS aggregation technology, at least one commentator seems certain that GDS is not Travelport. But just because AA and Travelport are battling in court, and Travelport continues enticing Orbitz away from the AA direct connection, does not mean Travelport is unable to support other distributors who want the AA pipe. In some ways, Travelport has been the GDS which is most open to cobbling together non-GDS content using unorthodox models. (See deals with Air Canada, easyJet and Southwest.)
Posted Feb 16, 2011
Hours after American Airlines acknowledged it backed off plans to levy booking fees on Travelport subscribers outside the Americas, the global distribution provider said it would remove surcharges assessed on AA tickets.
"We welcome AA's decision to remove its surcharges on bookings made through the Travelport GDS in markets outside of the U.S. and Caribbean," according to a statement attributed to chief commercial officer Kurt Ekert. "As a result of AA's decision, Travelport will remove the AA surcharge fee with effect from midnight GMT on 17 February 2011."
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