Travelport Reports A Good Start To The Year

Travelport had a very healthy first quarter, with “all our metrics going nicely,” said CEO Gordon Wilson. 

Its “Beyond Air” strategy continues to pay off: Revenue from eNett International, its payments business, grew 76%, to $33 million, as new customer implementations were completed, and the hotel and car rental attachment rate grew to 43%. In the Smartpoint desktop, “we’ve done a lot of work to make it easier to book a hotel,” Wilson said. 

Bookings were up in every region except the United States, due to the renegotiated contract with Orbitz, and the Middle East and Africa. But the U.S. drop was steep enough to cause a 5% decline overall, to 89.97 reported segments. 

Despite the recent terrorist attacks in Brussels and the earlier attacks in Paris, reported segments grew 1% in Europe. “The bounceback from terrorism is getting shorter all the time,” Wilson said. In addition, he said, there are a number of alternative airports in close proximity to Brussels, such as Amsterdam and Antwerp. 

In Latin America, “we grew share, mainly in Colombia, Argentina, and Peru,” he said. “We’re also getting a lot of bookings through Despegar,” one of the largest online agencies in the region. 

On the IT side of the house, Travelport will be managing the transition of Virgin Atlantic Airways to Delta Air Lines’ passenger services system in the fourth quarter. Delta Air Lines reacquired the data and intellectual property rights of the system from Travelport in 2014, but Travelport continues to run the system infrastructure for the Delta platform in its Atlanta data center. 

Originally called Deltamatic (and still is in-house), the system has been renamed Air4 for Virgin and any other equity partners, such as Aeromexico, that may choose to migrate to it.  

Travelport reported net income of $17.18 million for the first quarter, compared to a loss of $7.1 million in first quarter 2015, on total revenue of $609.26 million, up 6% year over year from $572.12 million. 

The Travel Commerce Platform, which includes the GDS and Beyond Air businesses, accounted for $578.88 million, a 7% increase.