Travelport and AWS team up to power a simpler and smarter future for travel retailing
Travelport, the travel retail specialist, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have now entered into a strategic, long term collaboration to use advanced cloud technology to accelerate the digital transformation of retailing in the travel industry.
The collaboration, which unites globally renowned expertise in travel technology, cloud technology, and hyper-personalised retailing, will focus on optimising Travelport's recently launched next-generation platform: Travelport+.
It will also drive innovation in travel merchandising with the launch of a new accelerator program that will incorporate talent from the tech start-up community.
"The travel industry has struggled to keep up with the pace of change in digital retail", acknowledged Greg Webb, chief executive officer at Travelport. "This landmark collaboration is specifically designed to address just that.
According to Mr Webb, 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", Mr Webb says.
As part of the long term collaboration, Travelport will migrate its global platform that connects travel agencies and travel suppliers to AWS. It will also use AWS technologies, including High Performance Compute (HPC), storage, security, analytics, machine-learning and databases to deliver a faster, easier, and more personalised travel booking experience.
In addition, Travelport will use AWS Managed Services to provide trusted operational expertise to help optimise platform efficiency and security.
Helping to optimise the new Travelport+ platform
Travelport+ is an extensive, next-generation platform that creates a simplified, capability-rich marketplace for travel retailing.
To optimise the platform, Travelport+ will leverage AWS compute, which will enhance efficiency by enabling Travelport to easily scale capacity for processing while maintaining superior performance for HPC workloads.
The company will also speed up content delivery through Travelport+ by leveraging its global network to cache content at "the edge" of the cloud, bringing it closer to end users anywhere in the world.
"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", says Adam Selipsky, CEO of Amazon Web Services.
"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", he says.
AWS will provide Travelport+ with proven global infrastructure and security that is built to satisfy the requirements of organisations managing highly sensitive data, such as financial institutions and travel companies. AWS was selected for this long term strategic collaboration due to its proven travel industry experience, along with its scalability, global reach, and culture of innovation.
Helping to drive innovation in the travel retail space
To accelerate innovation in travel retailing, AWS will further enhance Travelport's development and delivery model, enabling more rapid speed to market and the production deployment of solutions. This will give Travelport developers the ability to innovate faster and provide expanded access to solutions developed by AWS's established and start-up travel technology community.
Travelport will also use AWS's world-class capabilities, such as machine-learning and advanced analytics, to improve its personalization offering, leveraging the company's latest technologies to explore new ways to simplify the way travel is retailed.
With people around the world beginning to return to travel, there is an increasingly optimistic outlook. The world will certainly look different in the post-pandemic environment, but the travel industry is continuing to innovate to deliver better experiences for travellers.