The latest distribution news, launches and more from around the travel, tourism and hospitality industry in June 2013.
Friday 21 June 2016:
- Travelport signs new full content agreement with Transaero Airlines. The multi-year partnership with Russia’s second largest carrier will give Travelport-connected agents worldwide complete access to its fares, seat availability and schedules. Transaero originally launched its services in November 1991 and now includes 99 aircraft.
Wednesday 19 June 2013:
- SiteMinder expands in the US with distribution deal for South Beach Group in Miami. The agreement with the chain of 12 boutique hotels in the region gives them access via their property management systems to external websites for search and booking rooms.
Tuesday 18 June 2013:
- Silver Airways, Florida’s new hometown regional airline, has moved forward in its corporate evolution as a new stand-alone regional airline with the adoption of a reservations system and website powered by Sabre. The move transitions Silver Airways’ technology platform from the Hewlett Packard SHARES system.
- Air New Zealand launches the Air New Zealand Explorer Pass fare product. Available only to residents of the USA and Canada traveling on ANZ fares to New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific Islands, it allows travelers to purchase between three and ten flights using zone fares in the region. At the moment, fares are only available via ANZ’s call center and travel agents.
- GTA has partnered with Onyx Hospitality Group to offer 34 hotels in Thailand, Hong Kong and Qatar.
- Hotelogix, the cloud-based PMS and distribution company has partnered with Caribtek (New York and Toronto based) to resell its products Canada (Toronto and Vancouver), United States (Miami, New York, Chicago) and Jamaica (Montego Bay, Kingston).
Monday 17 June 2013:
- Travelport and Oman Air unite for seat selection service. The Interactive Seat Assignment tool gives agents connected to both Galileo and Worldspan the chance to use seat maps to secure and manage seat selections on the Omani carrier for customers.
Friday 14 June 2013:
- Travelport selected to handle GDS duties for Smart Helpline in Poland. Smart Helpline is the Polish division of GAMA Business Travel, a US-based business travel management company.
Thursday 13 June 2013:
- Travelport integrates of Galileo RoomMaster into TravelSky. The Chinese state-owned GDS will feature around 90,000 properties via RoomMaster on its system, allowing its connected agencies to search and book any of the hotels around the world.
- Amadeus launches Spanish language version of Agenta platform. The product is initially being used by three host agencies in the US – Dan Travel, Acapulco Travel and IberoAmericana Travel – and is designed to support the growing number of Spanish language agents, mostly in the independent or home-working sector.
- Ryanair to sell open-top bus tour tickets from City Sightseeing. Passengers will be able to book tour tickets in over 40 cities around Europe on the airline’s main website as well as on-board flights.
Tuesday 11 June 2012:
- London-based Supranational Hotels has chosen RateTiger as their online channel management partner.
- GTA and Preferred Hotel Group have partnered to increase visibility of the Preferred Hotel Group member portfolio among travellers worldwide. The new agreement gives Preferred Hotel Group enhanced distribution opportunities from GTA’s wholesale and retail HTML and XML systems, its expertise and a global network of over 2,300 local professionals worldwide.
Monday 10 June 2013:
- Travelport signs new content agreement with WestJet. The long-term deal will see agents connected to the Worldspan, Galileo and Apollo GDSs given access to the Canadian carrier’s content, fare families and some ancillary services (such as prepaid seats).
- On Holiday Group is putting together hotel deals for the newly launched Kayak package holidays service. The service, unveiled two weeks ago, now enables consumers to compare traditional packages, dynamic content and individual travel components from third parties as well as the OHG product which the OTA says will be exclusive deals with hoteliers.
- Dusit International, Thailand-based luxury hotel group has selected RateGain‘s PriceGain (rate intelligence tool) and RezGain (Distribution Management Solution) across all its properties to provide advanced rate intelligence and inventory distribution.
Friday 7 June 2013:
- Amadeus takes control of travel advertising business Travel Audience. The deal sees Amadeus become full owner of the company after upping the stake already held by off-shoot business TravelTainment. Travel Audience allows travel companies the chance to place targeted ads on other travel brands, such as metasearch engines and content sites. Current customer base is mainly online travel agencies. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
- Travelport agent customers in India to get SIM card booking tools. The partnership with Matrix Cellular, by way of Travelport’s local distributor, InterGlobe Technology Quotient, allows agents to secure overseas SIM cards during the existing booking process through the Galileo desktop.
Wednesday 5 June 2013:
- HomeAway.com will add an additional 11,000 rural European vacation rentals from Toprural.com. HomeAway acquired Toprural.com in April 2012.
Tuesday 4 June 2013:
- Travelport lays out plans for investment in Egyptian travel sector. Specifically, Travelport says it introduce the Rapid Reprice and Document Producer Plus in the country, following the release of Agentivity earlier this year. A 24-hour call centre for agents using Travelport has been established and will soon be bolstered by a “floor walker” personal service for new customers.
Monday 3 June 2013:
- Sabre and Expedia extend partnership into South East Asia. The agreement is for Sabre to initially power Expedia’s presence in Singapore and Malaysia, including content from the Sabre and Abacus GDSs. Sabre’s online fare search technology will also be used to power the back-end. Sabre and Expedia first established a partnership in the US and Canada in 2005.
- Travelport renews local distributor agreement in Vietnam. The new multi-year deal will see Galileo Vietnam continue to provide products and GDS services to agencies in the country, including those in neighbouring Cambodia and Laos. Galileo Vietnam was created over ten years ago and claims to have helped more than 500 local agencies.
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NB: World computers image via Shutterstock.
