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.

Flight data from THAI can also be integrated with the airline’s origin and destination revenue management system to enhance inventory display in preferred markets.

“By adopting Abacus seamless access, THAI can save time and money because they do not need to be constantly updating their GDS databases with automatic synchronisation of the DCA system.” said Abacus International Division Head of Airline Distribution, Ho Hoong Mau.

“This connectivity paves the way for THAI to manage yield effectively through other revenue management functionalities like Abacus Married Segments and Abacus Journey Data that allows the airline to optimise revenue and reduce seat wastage by driving higher trip revenue,” he added.

“Joining forces with Abacus is only the first step in our goal of regional expansion ,”  commented THAI manager passenger inventory, Chumnan Chiengkul.

“We are confident that Abacus’ extensive network across Asia will allow us to provide more services to more agents and passengers,” he said.

Singapore-based Abacus International is the Asia-Pacific’s leading provider of travel solutions and services with more than 20,000 travel agency locations in 24 markets.

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.

Lawyers are now working on the registration of the Lao Abacus National Marketing Company, which should be fully operational by the end of the year with the national airline holding 60% and Abacus 40% of the paid up capital.

It is understood the national marketing company will be capitalised at between US$400,000 to US$500,000, but both the airline and Abacus executives declined to confirm financial details saying the matter was in the hands of lawyers registering the company.

Abacus is owned by a consortium of Asian airlines and Sabre Inc which took a 35% stake in the Singapore headquartered company in 1998.

Since its inception in 1988, Abacus has invested US$150 million to develop and localise technology solutions for its 20,000 plus travel agency users in the region.

A joint media statement issued at the ceremony said Abacus-connected travel agents would “exclusively have access to Lao Airlines’ database of full range of fares.”

At present there are about 20 agents, mainly in Vientiane, that have Abacus terminals, but that is likely to increase significantly once the joint venture is operational by the end of the year and the airline uploads all of its promotional fares to Abacus system.

Mr Bailey noted in his presentation that a successful track record was a key factor that led to Abacus being awarded “this exclusive preferred joint venture status,” by the Lao national airline.

“Abacus sees Laos as a very important market given its rapid growth,” said Mr Bailey, who claimed the GDS would increase Lao Airlines’ distribution significantly through marketing support and travel agency promotions.

Up until the JV signing, the GDS has served the Lao market through its fully owned subsidiary Abacus Distribution Systems Thailand.

The joint venture was described as very similar in content to the Amadeus partnership with Thai Airways International, which gives the European-headquartered GDS a competitive edge in the Thai market through certain exclusivity clauses.

Abacus’s latest move should give it a strategic foothold in the Lao ticketing market that is expanding dramatically. The country’s airline ticket market generates around 400,000 booking segments a year, a small market when compared with Thailand’s 7 million segments, but industry sources say it is expanding fast, doubling in less than two years.

Most of the booking segment growth is driven by business related travel, trade missions, investment trips and diplomatic missions.

“Over the next three years it could double again,” an Abacus executive commented, who noted the flow of investment from China and Korea would encourage more airlines to fly to Laos.

There are about 50 travel agencies in Laos selling international airline tickets, but just 10 top agents control the major share. Some of them are appointed Thai Airways International ticketing agents, but the airline stipulates that they use Amadeus terminals exclusively.

Travel agents in Vientiane will watch that space carefully over the coming months to see if the airline’s joint venture with Abacus has the clout to adopt similar tactics.

The Abacus NMC will have an exclusive on the full fare inventory of Lao Airlines for all of its international services including promotional fares. In the long-run this could persuade even the most entrenched THAI appointed agents in Vientiane and Luang Prabang to break the embargo and install Abacus terminals.

It will depend largely on Lao Airlines expanding its regional network over the next six months using two Airbus 320s to gateway cities such as Bangkok, Singapore and Hanoi where passengers could be ticketed through to other airlines in the Abacus system. There are 450 bookable airlines on the GDS, but Lao Airlines will concentrate on enhancing commercial agreements with just a few namely Singapore Airlines, Vietnam Airlines, THAI, Malaysia Airlines and possibly Garuda as it considers establishing a service to Jakarta.

If the Lao Airlines decides in the future to upload its domestic fares and flights to the GDS it would further strengthen the local NMC’s earnings and encourage more travel agents to use Abacus  terminals.

Lao Airlines vice president, Seng Praseuth, said passenger traffic to Laos was growing at around 10 to 15% annually and with the arrival of two A320s later this year the airline was looking forward to building market activities through the joint venture with Abacus.

“We are taking our role seriously in this joint venture and through Abacus’ proven technology the promotion of all of all our special fares will go through Abacus,” he said.

Mr Bailey concluded his comments by describing the contract with Lao Airlines as a milestone in partnerships.

“Abacus sees Laos as an important market due to its geographic position and potential to be a travel hub in the region. Our joint business will grow significantly through promotional activities. We are excited to be the sole partner of Lao Airlines in this venture.”

Abacus can now claim business partnerships throughout the Mekong region. It joint ventures with the national airline in Vietnam and has JVs or business arrangements with private companies in Cambodia and Myanmar. In Thailand it has a fully-owned subsidiary company.

The addition of Laos to the NMC community gives Abacus 24 local ventures or partnerships across Asia, stretching from Pakistan to Korea.

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.

“This is innovation at its very best,” said Gillian Gibson, chief marketing officer for Travelport. “It is easy to install, becomes operational extremely fast and, on top of that, it provides intelligent system translation capabilities. In other words, it supports other GDS languages, eliminates the need for re-training and will strengthen their most valuable assets – their existing investments in people and technology.”

Travelport has a presence in 160 countries. It has approximately 3,500 employees and reported 2010 revenues of US$2.3 billion, Travelport is comprised of the global distribution system (GDS) business, which includes the Galileo and Worldspan brands and also owns approximately 48% of Orbitz Worldwide (NYSE: OWW), a leading global online travel company.

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.

It creators claim it will offer a wider choice of commissionable accommodation in an expanding hotel sector that Euromonitor estimates will reach US$545 billion in bookings by 2015.

Hotel booking engines and online travel agencies are earning massive commissions from hotel customers some in the region of 20% to 30% making it a lucrative supplementary business for GDS  that rely on fixed airline booking fees.

Travelport Rooms and More comes with “consumer insights”, metasearch functionality and user interface developed by Sprice.com, a company Travelport bought in May 2010.

The main selling features are a comparison shopping capability across multiple providers and an ability to both book and cancel hotel bookings using the same tool.

In addition to the hotel content available to standard Travelport GDS subscribers, additional content will be sourced from 20 hotel aggregators and OTAs including bedsonline, Transhotel, LateRooms.com and lowcostbeds.

Ultimately it could have over 200,000 hotel properties with rate comparisons to allow travel agents to choose the best deals for customers. It also includes hotel reviews, images as well as rental car content provided by TUI Cars.

Travelport’s group vice president, global hospitality Niklas Andréen, says as many 50 aggregators could e signed up by the end of the year.

Backing up the launch is a dedicated hospitality team and help desks for hotel and car supplier customers.

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.

They were told the booking engine was temporarily unavailable and offered a link to the “THAI office page” that lists telephone numbers for reservations and ticketing enquiries. However, when customers followed through on the phone THAI sales staff told them the anniversary fare was not applicable to phone-in customers. They offered customers a higher fare and suggested complaints be registered with the airline’s e-commerce department.

The down-time wrecked the airline’s promotions that were built around a series of expensive consumer newspaper advertisements both in English and Thai language.

Airline officials blamed the glitch on Amadeus claiming its “Nice-based operations were slow and failed to deal with the failure in an appropriate time-frame.”

It took the Nice-based technical experts 10 days to fix the mistake. Nice, in southern France is best known for its coastal resorts, laid-back hi-society lifestyle and the annual Cannes Film Festival.

THAI officials declined to say if they would seek financial compensation from the GDS for the failure.

The special 51st anniversary fares offered substantial discounts on both business and economy fares, ex-Bangkok.

For booking special 51st anniversary fares visit, http://www.thaiairways.com/offers/special-fare-promotions/en/thai_51st_en.htm.

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.

Air China also uses the Amadeus e-commerce solution for its small to medium enterprise corporate customers.

Corporate customers of Air China in Australia, Singapore, Canada and the United Kingdom use the Amadeus online tool to book their corporate travel on Air China, in line with their corporate purchasing policies.

The Amadeus e-Retail Engine benefits Air China customers in all international markets that the airline operates in. This will include travellers in the Philippines in the coming months.

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.

Adams joined Travelport in 2005 having worked earlier for Utell, Pegasus Solutions and Le Meridien Hotels & Resorts.

In related moves Joe Lim and Keith Harrison will both head up similar dedicated hospitality supplier teams in Travelport’s Asia Pacific and Americas regions respectively.

Travelport will recruit hospitality business development managers who will based in key travel markets. They will work with travel agents and provide training and educational support.

In 2010, Travelport generated a 12.1% growth in hotel bookings through Galileo and Worldspan and recent industry figures provided in the latest Pegasus View report, indicate that corporate hotel bookings made through GDS channels, will continue to grow by more than 20% through the second quarter of 2011.

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.

Functionalities include a ‘people you may know’ application, ‘latest activities of your contacts’, ‘groups’, an improved email alert system and an enhanced forum layout.

Agents can sign up to Travelport Opinions by following the link: www.travelportopinions.com/pr.

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.

Other GTA travel services include sightseeing tours and attractions, private transfers, group travel and rail passes. GTA distributes accommodations and other travel services through travel wholesalers, tour operators, travel agencies as well as directly to travellers.

It has offices throughout the region including Thailand.

For the year ended 31 December 2010, GTA’s transaction value was US$ 1,887 million, net revenue was US$294 million and Adjusted EBITDA was US$84 million.

The net proceeds from the sale of GTA will be used to pay down Travelport’s bank debt. As at 30 September 2010, on a pro forma basis for the proposed sale of GTA, group net debt was US$2,761 million.

Travelport will report earnings for the year ended 31 December 2010 on 30 March, 2011, when it expects to report Adjusted EBITDA of US$545 million and net revenue of US$1,996 million for Travelport excluding GTA.

The transaction is conditioned on the majority approval by Travelport’s bank lenders and a vote by the shareholders of Kuoni in favor of a capital increase by Kuoni to finance the transaction. The Kuoni and Hugentobler-Foundation, which represents 25% of the voting rights of Kuoni, has irrevocably committed to vote in favor of the capital increase.

The transaction is scheduled for completion in May this year.

Commenting on developments, Jeff Clarke, Chief Executive Officer and President of Travelport, said:

“Our strategy is to focus on our core proposition and, while GTA is a leader in its field. This is a positive opportunity for us to accelerate our plans. Additionally, Kuoni is a well known and long-term customer of Travelport and our aim will be to work in partnership with them to improve further the distribution and sale of the combined Kuoni/GTA inventory across the Travelport subscriber network.

“Subject to receiving approval from both our lenders and the shareholders of Kuoni, we will apply the net proceeds from this transaction to pay down our bank borrowings.”

Travelport was advised on this transaction by Blackstone Advisory Partners L.P. and UBS Investment Bank.

Travelport is a broad-based business services company and a leading provider of critical transaction processing solutions to companies operating in the global travel industry.

With a presence in 160 countries, approximately 5,400 employees and reported 2009 revenues of US$2.2 billion, Travelport is comprised of the global distribution system (GDS) business that includes the Galileo and Worldspan brands; GTA, a leading global, multi-channel provider of hotel and ground services; and Airline IT Solutions, which hosts mission critical applications and provides business and data analysis solutions for major airlines.

Travelport also owns approximately 48% of Orbitz Worldwide (NYSE: OWW), a leading global online travel company. Itis a private company owned by The Blackstone Group, One Equity Partners, Technology Crossover Ventures, and Travelport management.

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.

“Despite rising fuel costs and the recent recession, the Asian travel industry has shown its resilience in its quick recovery and strong growth years in both 2009 and 2010. I foresee that 2011 will continue to be a high growth year for Asia, albeit at a slightly slower pace,” he said.

Abacus views the boom in smart phones as one of the drivers that will need to be harnessed by travel companies intent on building a business in the online space.

Asia accounts for 43% of online usage, 3.1 billion mobile subscribers, 56% of the world’s 3G subscribers and more than 450 million mobile internet users.

Based on this rapid growth of online, ancillary services, mobile bookings and the resurgence of corporate travel, Abacus believes Asia is well poised to continue its strong growth of 2010 into 2011.

“In 2010, Abacus achieved its strongest year in terms of bookings since 2007,” said Mr Bailey. “We expect the figures to increase with Asia’s sharp growth in travel, although 2011 may be a year of cautious optimism for many.”

Abacus International VP marketing and VP India, Brett Henry, added, “2010 has been a record recovery year for many channels within the travel industry. Airlines have bounced back, corporate travel has picked up 20%.

According to the latest Abacus booking data, independent traveller bookings in Asia remained strong in 2010, up 11% from 2009. North Asia increased by 14 %, South East Asia by 8 % and South West Asia by 10 % year-on-year.

Asia Pacific international traffic accounts for 29.6% of the world’s RPKs, and set many new records in terms of passenger traffic. Asian aviation played a key role in the recovering global aviation industry, through its bulk of growth, speed of recovery and continued strength.

“Growth is the name of the game in travel at the moment, and although 2011 may not hit milestone figures like we saw in 2010, it will certainly be a year of growth with the emergence of Asia as the leading travel region,” stated Mr Bailey.

“Led by a slowing China and a growing India, in what has been aptly dubbed as slowing dragon and crouching tiger, Asia is well equipped and set to take the leap forward in establishing its dominance of the travel industry. It is important that we understand this evolving trend and are at the forefront to address any needs for the growing industry and to provide insight to our partners and customers,” he concluded.