Travelport Chief: Technology Will Offset Diminishing GDS Fees
by Michèle McDonaldThe growth of travel agency incentive payments from GDS companies is likely “to slow markedly” over the next few years, but a new focus on profit-boosting agency technology will more than compensate, according to Gordon Wilson, Travelport president and chief executive.
“The rebates are not going to go away” and will still be a major part of agencies’ revenue streams, Wilson said.
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But the technology that Travelport provides to enable agencies to sell ancillary products and create tailored offers will eventually become “more important to agencies’ long-term success,” Wilson told Travel Market Report.
Universal Desktop goes live
A key element of that shift will be the Travelport Universal Desktop, which, after a number of delays, is finally set to go live in a U.S. agency, Cain Travel of Denver, early next year.
The desktop had a long pilot with Flight Centre, a major Australian agency, and more than 60% of the company’s locations have been converted. Installations also are slated for agencies in South Africa, Hong Kong and Singapore.
“Global products take a long time to get right, and we had some missteps along the way,” Wilson said. “We had to redo some things, but we’d rather put a good product out than meet a deadline.”
Flexibility remains
Travelport agencies already have the ability to switch back and forth between the green-screen emulator that requires cryptic commands and a graphical user interface (GUI). That ability will remain with the Universal Desktop, Wilson said.
“An expert user of cryptic commands can be really fast and make the GDS do things that are quite formidable,” he said. “We’re not taking that away.”
Easier to train newcomers
As new people come into the industry, it will be easier to train them on a GUI, he said. But he stressed that the new interface is not “dumbed down,” as some consumer-facing GUIs are.
“It’s a professional desktop,” he said. “It’s augmenting the green screen, so agents can spend less time on simple tasks.”
Facilitates ancillary sales
The graphical interface also will be more conducive to the sale of airlines’ ancillary products, he said. “The minute you get into things like meal vouchers and lounge passes, it’s very hard to do that in green-screen mode.”
But the changes will go beyond booking. “At most agencies, each consultant has about 16 applications open on the screen and flips between them constantly,” Wilson said.
The Universal Desktop will integrate many of those applications into the workflow. It’s designed to “augment” the agent’s experience, “not to dumb it down.”
Airline dialogue has changed
Wilson said he sees progress in getting airlines’ ancillary content into the GDS, and “the airline dialogue has changed.”
That dialogue between GDSs and airlines historically has been rancorous, particularly during the seasons of contract renegotiations.
Now, rather than focusing on segment fees, many airlines are talking with GDS companies about how they can work together to sell more of their new optional products and services.
American Airlines the exception
There is, of course, one notable exception – American Airlines continues to withhold its ancillary products from the GDS channel and is suing both Travelport and Sabre, citing antitrust violations.
But Wilson believes a sort of equilibrium has been reached in the GDS-airline relationship, he said.
While the drawn-out drama of American’s battle to upend the distribution system has gotten most of the attention, “American is the exception, not the rule,” Wilson said.
