Travelport, IBM Integrate Expense Management Tools

Travelport GDS, which operates both the Galileo and Worldspan technology platforms, announced an agreement with IBM to jointly deliver an integrated expense management and booking solution. The solution combines IBM's Global Expense Reporting Solutions (GERS) with the capability to integrate all Travelport GDS bookings. The agreement brings to Travelport and IBM customers an expense management solution with integrated travel booking data regardless of how the transaction was booked.

Under the agreement, Travelport GDS will focus on its core competencies of delivering GDS content and Traversa, the company's online travel management booking solution. IBM will provide expense management services via its well known GERS solution. This enables employees to submit, approve, reimburse, and monitor T&E and other business related expenses with an efficient automated workflow.

Travelers whose organizations deploy Travelport solutions coupled with GERS will enjoy the convenience of having credit card billings automatically matched against travel reservation transactions. Corporations will benefit because greater visibility into booked versus actual spend, is a critical component of effective corporate travel policy compliance.

The joint solution offers: increased traveler satisfaction and user adoption, enhanced corporate control and travel policy compliance, streamlined travel and expense management reimbursement processes, expert global delivery and localized support and robust enterprise business travel Intelligence.

"Our new agreement with Travelport reflects our commitment to the business travel marketplace," said Ray Curatolo, director of GERS for IBM. "It is a key step in our strategy to demonstrate IBM's leadership in global end-to-end travel management."

"We are delighted to team with IBM to offer our joint customers an end-to-end travel policy management and travel spend management solution, one that is currently in use by IBM itself, which has one of the largest corporate travel management programs in the world today," said Armin Meier, chief commercial officer, Travelport GDS. "This integrated solution will provide our mutual customers with innovative expense management capabilities, helping companies control travel and expense processing costs and manage, analyze and retrieve reports on business travel-related operations. Importantly, it will also facilitate travel policy compliance."

According to Meier, "Our ability to support large global corporations such as IBM on a worldwide basis through local services and content is a unique distinctive competence that adds quantitative value to our corporate customers. Integrating the GERS expense management solution with Traversa will further add to our corporate value proposition by applying the capabilities, experience and technology that IBM, working with Travelport, has gained within its own business."

Visit www.travelport.com.