Travelport
Official Post by Travelport
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Barcelona, 22 June 2021.- eDreams ODIGEO, Europe’s largest online travel company and one of the largest European e-commerce businesses, today announced a strategic agreement with a worldwide leader in travel retail, Travelport. The deal will see eDreams ODIGEO integrating Travelport+, a next-generation platform that creates a simplified, capability-rich, marketplace for travel retailing.
The agreement strengthens eDreams ODIGEO’s unique offering of travel content to consumers globally. Over the last 12 months eDreams ODIGEO has been developing a number of growth opportunities for the business, and today’s announcement is one of many initiatives put in place to continue improving its unique customer proposition and lead the post-pandemic market once it is safe to resume travel.
The new agreement is significant as it will allow eDreams ODIGEO to further strengthen its capabilities as a multi-GDS company. This latest step to diversify and enhance the company’s offer will allow it to provide more travel routes for customers, even more competitive prices, and increased flexibility and choice.
Overall, eDreams ODIGEO serves more than 60 million user searches every day, resulting in more than 9 billion different itineraries that are generated by combining travel options from over 660 airline carriers. Travelport+’s modern, lightweight, highly functional microservices distribution system will enable eDreams ODIGEO to access additional content from world leading airlines, as well as unique ancillaries and airline fare families, meaning customers will receive the cheapest fares for any existing flight, and the largest choice of unique enhancements and additional services. The platform’s retailing and merchandising capabilities will offer eDreams ODIGEO customers more flexibility and choice in their bookings, allowing them to create tailored routes which meet their exacting requirements. The customer-centric approach is also poised to benefit the business’ airline partners.
The agreement sees two travel-tech heavy weights join forces to drive innovation across the industry. eDreams ODIGEO is a technology-led business with one of the largest development teams in the European travel industry. The business is transforming the online travel booking experience with innovative products, it also boasts industry-leading capabilities in machine-based learning. Today, eDreams ODIGEO leverages its leading Artificial Intelligence capabilities to generate over 45 billion daily predictions to anticipate customer needs and travel demand. Travelport+, in turn, represents a multi-year investment by Travelport to accelerate industry innovation in multi-source content distribution, travel retailing and value generation. The combination of these leading technology capabilities will result in unparalleled benefits for travellers and increased competitiveness for both businesses.
Javier Bellido, Air Content Strategies Director at eDreams ODIGEO said: “The addition of Travelport’s leading travel retail system into our flight content platform is yet another example of how the business is pivoting to strengthen its position after the COVID-19 pandemic. It is essential that businesses really focus on meeting their customers needs in order to facilitate a rapid recovery in the travel sector. This agreement is testament to our commitment to putting the customers’ experience at the forefront of our innovations. As a multi-GDS company, we are able to offer better connectivity and content globally. We are looking forward to working alongside Travelport to continue leading the transformation of the travel industry through the latest technologies.”
Rob Brown, GVP and Managing Director, Global OTA at Travelport, said: “What we have implemented to date is just the beginning of the joint vision we share with eDreams ODIGEO. We are confident that Travelport+ will bring about real value for eDreams ODIGEO and its customers, and look forward to keeping them ahead of today’s accelerating pace of change as we continue to execute our roadmap.”
eDreams ODIGEO’s CEO, Dana Dunne, and Travelport CEO, Greg Webb, will be discussing this agreement and the future of travel retailing at Travelport’s virtual event, Hello Modern Retailing, on Thursday, 24 June. To register to attend the event, please visit travelport.com/hello-modern-retailing