Travelport leaps into retailing

Travelport recently entered a strategic, long-term collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to use advanced cloud technology to accelerate the digital transformation of retailing in the travel industry. The move aims to make the travel booking process simpler and more modernised.

Nisha Verma

This collaboration will focus on optimising Travelport’s recently launched next-generation platform, Travelport+. In addition, it will drive innovation in travel merchandising with the launch of a new accelerator program that will incorporate talent from the tech start-up community. The collaboration was followed by a virtual event titled ‘Hello Modern Retailing’, which saw senior Travelport officials speaking on modern retailing as well as sharing insights into the Travelport+ platform.

Gregg Web, CEO, Travelport, shared, “AWS’s retail heritage makes them uniquely qualified to optimise digital retail platforms, simplify complex environments, and enable game-changing innovation in the travel retailing space. With AWS as our preferred cloud partner, we are going to create a simpler, smarter, and better future for travel retailing. We have formed a long-term partnership with AWS to both optimise the Travelport+ platform and drive innovation in travel merchandising. With 20 years’ experience, powering the world’s most sophisticated retailer, there is no better partner than AWS to achieve our vision of modernising travel retailing.”

Adam Selipsky, Incoming CEO of Amazon Web Services, shared that Travelport is using the flexibility, scalability, and reliability of the world’s leading cloud to provide the speed and insights needed to put the customer first. “By leveraging the broadest and deepest set of cloud capabilities and AWS’s proven global infrastructure, Travelport can enhance the performance of its platform and continue to develop new ways to simplify the travel booking experience.”

Speaking at the virtual event, David Peller, MD, Travel and Hospitality at Amazon Web Services, said, “The collaboration will focus first on optimising Travelport+, leveraging high performance compute from AWS to scale travel search processing capacity, while maintaining superior performance. Additionally, Travelport+ will leverage AWS’ global network to catch content at the edge speeding up content delivery by bringing it closer to users. Travelport’s migration to AWS will also enable them to improve personalisation with machine learning and advanced analytics,” he said.

Pellerr added, “While many technical factors played a role in the collaboration between Travelport and AWS, what really brought us together was our shared culture of innovation. Working with Travelport, we see an organisation that, like us, is committed to inventing on behalf of customers. Travelport’s shift to the AWS cloud is a key pillar of its reinvention.”