ATLANTA, June 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Travelport GDS, one of the world's leading global distribution system (GDS) providers, today announced a new seven-year agreement with MLT Vacations, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Delta Air Lines and one of the largest providers of vacation packages in the United States, managing multiple package vacation brands, including NWA WorldVacations, Worry-Free Vacations, Continental Airlines Vacations and, effective July 6, Delta Vacations. Through the agreement, MLT Vacations will process all reservations for their four brands through Travelport's GDS platform. The Travelport deal also provides MLT Vacations with three strategic solutions including industry leading e-Pricing(TM), to ensure travelers have the most advanced tools for shopping low fares; Travelport Rapid Reprice(TM), an automated ticket repricing product and XML Pro(TM), a Web Services solution enabling fast and efficient interface with Worldspan and the exchange of structured data.
MLT Vacations will implement Travelport Rapid RepriceTM the industry leading product that has been automating the complex, time-consuming ticket exchange processes since 1999. Travelport Rapid RepriceTM enables MLT Vacations to increase efficiency by automatically recalculating the price of a ticket in a fraction of the time it takes to recalculate manually. The product automatically integrates fare and rule categories for voluntary changes, net fares, private fares and fare-by-rule from both ATPCO and SITA filed fares.
A significant decrease in the instances of airline debit memos can be expected due to the products superior data integrity and repricing accuracy. Travelport Rapid RepriceTM facilitates repricing of tickets irrespective of the booking system that issued the ticket and has been delivering financial rewards to some of the world's largest agency and airline customers. More than 100 million fully automated transactions have been processed since launch, demonstrating the product's unique functionality and scalability.
"We are pleased to partner with Travelport, providing MLT Vacations suppliers and customers with consistent round-the-clock access to inventories and fares via a single robust connectivity platform," said Ken Pomerantz, president and chief marketing officer for MLT Vacations. "Our options for connectivity were either to build separate connections to each of our key suppliers or to use a GDS. In the end, Travelport's global footprint, their e-Pricing and search capabilities and the efficiency to connect to a single platform were most in line with our needs. We are working closely with Travelport's technology team to maximize the performance of our connectivity and transaction systems which can grow with our business."
MLT Vacations will deploy Travelport e-Pricing, the travel industry's first multi-server-based pricing technology powering an unrivalled suite of low-fare shopping solutions that accesses the world's best and lowest fares. Powering the world's major online travel retailers and leading travel providers, e-Pricing is capable of searching millions of fares and hundreds of thousands of itinerary options to find the lowest available fares and ensures airlines, consumers and travel agents get the information and choice they expect. The dynamic e-Pricing engine provides the fastest, most accurate fare searches, and yields more comprehensive itinerary results from a growing universe of Travelport participating airlines.
"This new agreement demonstrates the value that leading leisure travel vacation providers such as MLT Vacations place in Travelport's cost-effective, reliable and broad-based e-Commerce solutions and shopping capabilities that access the broadest possible range of prices and schedules for clients around the world from one platform," said Travis Christ, president, The Americas of Travelport GDS. "With our single platform, there is no need for tour operators to use multiple systems depending on the point-of-sale. MLT Vacations is one of the nation's premier vacation providers and Travelport GDS is proud to support them."
MLT Vacations will also utilize XML Pro, the first XML solution for fast and efficient interface with a GDS that provides an affordable solution for travel companies to exchange structured data, as well as reduces operating costs and system maintenance. XML Pro also eliminates the need for suppliers and retailers to use third-party solutions for GDS interface, and employs the latest OpenTravel Alliance universal data transmission specifications for travel.
About Travelport
Travelport is one of the world's largest travel conglomerates offering broad based business services to companies operating in the global travel industry. The company is comprised of the global distribution system (GDS) business that includes the Worldspan and Galileo brands; GTA, a leading global, multi-channel provider of hotel and ground services; IT Services and Software, which hosts mission critical applications and provides business and data analysis solutions for major airlines. With 2008 revenues of $2.5 billion, Travelport operates in 160 countries and has over 5,500 employees.
Travelport also owns approximately 48% of Orbitz Worldwide , a leading global online travel company.
Travelport is a private company owned by The Blackstone Group, One Equity Partners, Technology Crossover Ventures and Travelport management.
About MLT Vacations
MLT Vacations, one of the largest providers of vacation packages in the United States, manages multiple package vacation brands, including NWA WorldVacations, Worry-Free Vacations, and Continental Airlines Vacations. NWA WorldVacations offers vacation packages via scheduled air service on Northwest Airlines, Delta Air Lines and other airline partners, with convenient connections from many U.S. and Canadian cities, to destinations in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, Europe and Asia, including luxury vacation packages and destination weddings and honeymoons. Worry-Free Vacations offers charter vacation packages from several U.S. cities to destinations in Mexico and the Caribbean. Continental Airlines Vacations offers vacation packages via scheduled air service on Continental Airlines with convenient connections from many U.S. and Canadian cities, to destinations in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia. For more information, visit http://www.worldagentdirect.com/.
Travelport GDS
CONTACT: Travelport GDS: Jill Brenner, Corporate Communications
Director, +1-973-939-1325, jill.brenner@travelport.com, MLT Vacations: Susan
Worwa, Manager, Corporate Communications, +1-952-470-3007,
sworwa@mltvacations.com
