Travelport(NYSE: TVPT), the leading Travel Commerce Platform, and Al Tayyar Travel Group, the leading travel company in the Middle East, have today announced a new expanded long-termtechnology partnership.
Under the agreement, Al Tayyar Travel Group’s relationship with Travelport will extend beyond the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia into the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. The Group will also start using Travelport’sTravel Commerce Platform, which provides fast and intelligent search of content from over 400 airlines, 650,000 hotel properties and 35,000 car rental locations, across its online as well as offline entities. These include AlMosafer.com,Tajawal.comand AlTayyaronline.com.
In a bid to help streamline Al Tayyar Travel Group’s ticketing processes and efficiency levels, the new agreement will also see the Group adopt two new Travelport tools, Travelport Queue Control Consoleand Travelport Net Fare Manager.Travelport Queue Control Console helps travel agencies take care of routine, repetitive booking tasks by automating ticketing management processes. Travelport Net Fare Manager provides further support by automating the often complex, time consuming and manual private fare and airline contracts processes.
With over 250 airlines signed up to use Travelport’s unique merchandising technology, the new agreement will also see Al Tayyar Travel Group’s online as well as offline agencies benefit from being able to display, gain powerful information around, and sell branded fare families and ancillary products (such as paid seat assignments, baggage fees, priority boarding, etc.) from these airlines. Furthermore, as Travelport is the only global distribution system (GDS) operator to be certified by IATA as a “Level 3” Aggregator under its New Distribution Capability (NDC) initiative, the Group will soon further benefit from its relationship with the company by creating NDC connections with airlines as they become available.
Commenting on the agreement, Mr. Abdullah Al Dawood, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Al Tayyar Travel Group, said: “We have enjoyed a very successful long-standing partnership with Travelport. The company’s fast, accurate and reliable technology, coupled with its wide variety of high quality content, have helped our agencies remainahead of their peers for many years now. It’s now time to extend this privilege to new countries and online entities that are central to our growth strategy.”
Matthew Powell, Managing Director, Middle East, Africa and South Asia at Travelport, added: “Travelport is proud to continue its long-standing relationship with Al Tayyar Travel Group. The expansion of our relationship is testament to the tremendous value we provide the Group through our leadership in technology, content and service. We look forward to helping the organisation grow across the region, while delivering operational improvements that make a meaningful impact on the bottom line.”