Italian low cost carrier signs up for GDS participation

Travelport, one of the world’s leading global distribution system (GDS) providers, has today announced details of a further direct connect content agreement with leading Italian low cost carrier –Wind Jet. Under the new agreement, the full content of the airline will be made available in the GDS channel via Galileo’s innovative direct connect solution. Today’s announcement means that four new low cost carriers have now signed up this year and Travelport expects to announce a further leading low cost carrier over the coming weeks.

Travelport confirmed that the development of its direct connect product was a reflection of the growing importance of the low cost air sector and the demands of its travel agency customers to have the content available through the GDS channel. The new direct connect participation option, which complements the traditional channel offering a further 60 low cost carriers, has sparked considerable interest amongst the low cost carrier community.

The solution, now being widely used by travel agencies throughout Europe, was introduced early last year with launch partner easyJet. Since its launch, travel agents have reported greatly improved efficiency and productivity compared to booking via the web, which typically takes agents four times longer. In contrast to low cost carrier websites (and other GDS providers), the Galileo direct connect solution uniquely gives agents the ability to book low cost carrier and traditional airline flights in the same passenger name record (PNR) - for example, outbound easyJet and inbound British Airways.

By booking the low cost carrier content via the GDS, agents also benefit from the automatic handoff of the booking data to their mid or back office systems for accounting purposes.

Damiano Sabatino, General Manager, Southern Europe for Travelport GDS, commented: “In today’s challenging economic environment, we are seeing more and more businesses wanting to tightly manage their travel expenditure and this technology effectively enables travel agents to compare low cost alternatives alongside traditional airfares in their preferred booking environment. It also provides low cost airlines with a very efficient and simple means of distribution.”

“Our successful implementation across Europe has indicated that booking a low cost flight using this solution is significantly faster than any previous method used by travel agents. We are delighted to now be able to offer the same efficiency on Wind Jet flights,” continued Sabatino.

Massimo Polimeni, Senior Vice President, Marketing & Sales for Wind Jet, commented: “So many travel agents prefer to be able to book through the GDS so this Galileo solution works very well for our business and we look forward to being able to distribute our content more widely. In our home country, Italy, Galileo has a particularly good network of agency customers.”

The Galileo direct connect solution has already been successfully rolled-out to Galileo travel agencies across Europe and is soon to be launched in the Middle East and Africa.

(c) Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation. Date posted: 06-Nov-09