: Travelport (NYSE: TVPT), a leading travel commerce platform, today announced the signing of a major multi-year technology agreement with CTI. The agreement includes the provision of the company’s industry leading point of sale solutions, Travelport Smartpoint and Travelport Hotelzon, as well as its mobile app for agencies, Travelport Trip Assist.
With around 125 staff based at offices in Manchester, Bristol, and Leeds, CTI is the United Kingdom’s leading Travel Partnership Company (TPC) for corporate companies. Following an extensive review of its requirements, the company will now use Travelport Smartpoint, as well as its Universal API technology for intelligent, fast and accurate search of high-quality content from over 400 airlines, over 650,000 hotel properties, and 35,000 car rental locations.
With over 260 airlines signed up to use Travelport’s unique merchandising technology, CTI will also benefit from being able to display, gain insights from and sell branded fare families and ancillary products (such as paid seat assignments, baggage fees, priority boarding, etc.) from these airlines.
The company will adopt the Hotelzon platform for its hotel bookings as it delivers additional reservation management, reporting, and travel policy implementation features to support corporate travel bookings. The platform also provides corporations and their staff with specially negotiated rates and other offerings from both unique independent properties and global chains worldwide.
CTI will use Travelport Trip Assist to support, engage and connect with its travelers at every stage of their journey. The fully branded mobile engagement solution will empower the company to build stronger relationships with travelers through smart itinerary management capabilities and agency defined messages, which help provide its travelers with day of travel assistance including real-time trip alerts and click to call agent support.
As the first global distribution system operator to be certified by IATA as a “Level 3” Aggregator under its New Distribution Capability (NDC) initiative, Travelport will soon create NDC connections with airlines as they become available.
Commenting on the new agreement, Clive Wratten, CEO at CTI, said: “This new technology agreement with Travelport demonstrates our commitment to be a ‘Trusted Travel Partner’, by allowing us to support the customer from the moment they leave to the moment they return. This coupled with the best in content will allow us to further differentiate the company in today's increasingly competitive corporate travel market.”
Paul Broughton, Regional Managing Director of UK and Ireland at Travelport, added: “Today’s announcement is another significant endorsement for the value our technology, content and mobile leadership provides. Travelport is proud to be working with CTI and we look forward to seeing the company continue to evolve and grow.”