THAI partners with Abacus

BANGKOK, 27 September 2011 – Thai Airways announced Monday it has signed a partnership contract with Abacus that will offer travel agents a real-time link to the airline’s fare inventory.

Through Abacus Direct Connect the GDS connects its travel agency subscribers, worldwide, to THAI’s central reservation system without going through other systems.

Also, THAI will gain access to use the point-of-sale quota allocation and control the type of queries received from Abacus system, which gives THAI flexibility over flight inventory. Read more

Abacus JV in Laos up and running

VIENTIANE 15 September 2011 – Abacus International and Lao Airlines signed a joint venture contract, Wednesday, which will give the global distribution system exclusive access to the national airline’s fare inventory in landlocked Laos.

Abacus CEO Robert Bailey and Lao Airlines president, Somphone Douangdara, exchanged contracts at a ceremony in the Lao capital to establish an “exclusive” partnership just weeks ahead of the airline taking delivery of a new Airbus 320 that will be used to inaugurate a new service to Singapore.

Abacus and Lao Airlines are entering a business partnership that will run for an initial 10 years with an option to renew for another five years. Read more

Travelport launches Smartpoint

ATLANTA, 12 August 2011 — Travelport launched its Smartpoint App, Thursday, a new add-on application for the Galileo Desktop, offering graphical, point-and-click technology.

The application extends the Galileo Desktop user options making it more dynamic and interactive. It allows agents to use commands from any GDS within a cryptic environment thereby dramatically reducing training needs.

Travelport Smartpoint App was originally developed to fulfill the business needs of Travelport’s largest global customers, but the product’s benefits and capabilities became so far-reaching and broad-based that it is now available on a commercial basis. Read more

Travelport redefines hotel booking engine

BANGKOK, 30 June, 2011 – Travelport introduce its Travelport Rooms and More™ hotel booking engine on the eve of an industry partners convention that opened in Bangkok earlier today.

The new “one-stop booking engine will roll out in the travel agency market place, worldwide, in July and will be accessible to agencies not using the Travelport GDS platform.

Travelport is striving to build a more user-friendly hotel booking tool for travel agents, against the backdrop of intense competition from hotel booking services and online travel agencies in Asia that are out pacing traditional GDS in non-airline bookings. Read more

Amadeus 10-day hitch blanks TG campaign

BANGKOK, 3 June 2011 –Thai Airways International lost online access to its 51st anniversary fares for 10 days after a failure of the Amadeus fare system.

TTR Weekly alerted readers last week that the fares were unavailable despite a heavy advertising campaign in the consumer press. The fares were off line from 16 to 27 May before Amadeus was able to correct the error.

The fares were introduced, 1 May, to celebrate the airline’s 51st anniversary with generous discounts, but it back-fired on the airline when loyal customers went online to book the fares. Read more

Amadeus extends Air China contract

Bangkok, 30 May 2011 – Amadeus and Air China, announced, last week, a three-year contract extension for Amadeus’ e-Retail solution, which has been used by the airline since 2007 covering online sales across Asia Pacific, Europe and North America.

With the Amadeus e-Retail solution, Air China’s customers are able to check fares and flight availability make real-time bookings and benefit from e-ticketing. Travellers are also able to use the Amadeus Flex-Pricer search tool, which returns flight and fare options for a wide range of dates via a calendar feature. This makes it much easier for customers to identify dates on which lower fare options are available and is user friendly. Read more

Travelport builds support teams

BANGKOK, 23 March 2011 – Travelport will expand its hospitality team this year to build hotel bookings through its two GDS platforms, Galileo and Worldspan, as well as its  portal, Travelport Leisure, the company announced last week.

Led by group vice president for hospitality and partner marketing, Niklas Andréen, the new drive will focus  closely on hoteliers to incorporate more content through Travelport outlets.

As part of the new team structure, Travelport has promoted Paul Adams to the role of hotel and car rental director for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) with overall responsibility for driving growth across the region.

Read more

Travelport improves networking tool

Hong Kong, 17 March 2011 – Travelport launched an improved networking site, Wednesday, called Travelport, Opinions for travel agents resident in Asia.

The free online networking tool connects 7,600 travel industry members, worldwide, who have already signed up.

The tool will allow agents to create and search hotel reviews and post questions to destination experts around the world as well as access hotel related media including 110,000 images and 2,500 videos.

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Travelport sells GTA to Kuoni

New York, 7 March 2011 – Travelport, a travel booking transaction processor, or global distribution system, announced Monday it has reached an agreement to sell its GTA business, a leading wholesaler of ground content, to Kuoni for US$720 million.

The sale is in line with Travelport’s plan to focus on its core business.

Established more than 30 years ago as a privately owned company, in the United Kingdom,  GTA provides hotel accommodation and related ground travel services with an inventory of around 35,000 hotel properties in over 130 countries.

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Abacus reports strong recovery

SINGAPORE, 10 February 2011 – After a strong showing in 2010, Asia is on target to take its spot as the largest region in travel by 2015, Abacus International president and CEO Robert Bailey said during a media briefing in Singapore, Wednesday.

According to Abacus data, booking transactions for 2010 ended on a record high, even higher than the pre-recession period back in 2007. This trend appears to support data from other organisations such as the UNWTO that predicts Asia’s tourism industry will surpass North America and Europe within five years.

Abacus reported that booking transactions were up +11% year-on-year from 2009. This coincided with international arrivals into Asia, which was up by almost 13% in Asia. Globally, international tourist arrivals were up 7 % after a 4 % decline in 2009. Growth is expected to continue in 2011, but at a slower pace of 4 to 6%, according to Mr Bailey.

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