Travelport announced Tuesday it had signed a new multi-year agreement with Air Canada, an airline industry leader in innovative distribution of ancillary services. Through the agreement, Air Canada provides Travelport travel agency customers access to fares, seat availability, fare families and additional services. The agreement covers Air Canada Flight Pass and Tango, Tango Plus, Latitude and Executive fare families, and provides the ability to purchase optional services such as paid seat assignments, pre-paid meals and Maple Leaf Lounge access.
"Working collaboratively with Air Canada we have developed an industry-leading end-to-end solution capable of merchandizing Air Canada’s content along with the aggregation of the GDS content, saving agents time when pricing, shopping and booking," said Travis Christ, president, the Americas, Travelport GDS. "Integration of this content into a single screen is an industry first and allows the agent to offer the traveler a fully informed travel choice.”
Travelport will launch an enhanced version of Travelport Agencia in Canada in early 2011. The travel agency desktop tool will try to meet the needs of the Canadian marketplace through its ability to aggregate traditional content and optional services from multiple sources. The agreement addresses the airline’s need for merchandising, the agency’s need for efficient processes, and the traveler’s desire for transparency. Travelport Universal Desktop which is currently in testing in Australia and will go into market deployment in 2011 will be another enabler for Travelport customers outside of Canada to access the full richness of Air Canada’s content and products.
“This agreement confirms Travelport as a preferred distribution system for Air Canada," said Graham Wareham, senior director of product distribution at Air Canada. "Our companies will continue to work together to further develop next generation distribution and traveler authenticated shopping solutions for the travel trade and corporate travel buyers."
The agreement earned the acclaim of an industry professional, as David McCaig, president and COO of ACTA, praised the deal as an example of airlines and technology providers working together to help the industry.
“On behalf of ACTA’s 18,000 members, we applaud Air Canada and Travelport for delivering full content of Canada’s largest airline to Canadian travel agencies in an innovative manner that provides transparency and efficiency in shopping and booking Air Canada fares," McCaig said.
