Thank You, it gives me great pleasure in being able to speak to you all at this great event. I have been asked to speak to you about online travel distribution, and in particular giving you an overview of what Travelport is doing to assist you all get on line. My role within Travelport is the Director of Business Development in Africa, which has been an interesting journey over the last 12 months since I took on this role. Why this conference is so interesting to me is because before Travelport acquired Worldspan I was responsible for Worldspans product development in Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia so it is a great thing seeing all the products that were developed for the ecommerce boom in the US / Europe now being deployed in Africa on the Galileo platform.Previously at Worldspan I worked very closely with some of the major online companies as they started up working with the likes of Expedia, Lastminute.com and Ebookers – so I hope I can pass on some of the lessons learnt then, and also show you how Travelport is working to get our customers (both suppliers and travel agents) online in Africa.My plan now is to reflect on some of these insights – but I don’t profess to have all the answers – I, as well as all the Travelport team in this room, am really keen to understand if we are assessing the current situation accurately and have identified your needs correctly. We want to know how we can partner for the long term to help grow your businesses and keep the value chain intact for the benefit of all players. I would be disappointed if we didn’t have some healthy debate around this throughout the next couple of days.
I understand that for a number of you in the room the Travelport brand will be less known, but this is something we are hoping to change. Travelport as a entity owns 3 GDS, Galileo, Worldspan and Apollo. GTA and also a major shareholder in Orbitz. The GDS business outside of the US market is focused on the core two systems of Galileo and Worldspan. In Africa galileo is the largest GDS and we are hoping this grows next year with our market entry strategies that are focused on the online market. Travelport acquired Worldspan roughly 2 years ago, the acquisition took place due to the natural fit the two companies provided to each other. Galileo had a strong global footprint, strong content agreegation and private fare solutions. Whereas Worldspan provided significant on-line presence and experience, do you know that in the dot coom peak in the early 2000’s over 80% of the worlds online transations were processed by Worldspan. This knowledge combined with Worldspans extensive shopping, pricing and re-pricing technologies provided Galileo with the perfect partner to succeed as we move in to a very changeable travel landscape.The nett result is that by keeping both core systems (along with Apollo in the US) and taking best of breed from both systems we are able to give all our customers the tools and systems that they require. - travelport provides fully integrated access to over 430 “tradtional” carriers, and over 70 low cost carriers. - Travelport provides access to over 85,000 hotel properties globally. - Travelport provides access to over 25 car rental companies.We believe that content is king, we have seen many systems come and go who provide access to a limited content base, but in this increasingly complex world the traveller needs to be, and expects to be able to compare multiple prices and packages in a single system.
As I mentioned earlier, I believe that Africa is at the start of its online journey and for me it is very exciting. I believe that we can compare where the on-line market place is with regards to travel to where the US or western Europe where roughly 10 years ago. The benefit that Africa has is that firstly we have seen a lot of experiments in the US markets that have now all but disappeared so Africa will benefit from the experience gained in these markets. Expedia is a prime example of a very organised and focused online travel company, and as I am sure you will hear later today about how they plan to enter the African market, you will all be able to learn from what Expedia are doing in Africa.Africa will also benefit from the disruptive technology and leap frog other markets, mobile commerce is a prime example of this I am sure many of us in this room have already checked the internet on your blackberry’s or iphones today. I am sure Africa in general will embrace mobile technology a lot faster than the rest of the world.So if we are to compare where the US markets where then this should give us a good indication with regards to how Africa will be over the next few months.If I take you back to the late 1990’s online conferences like this were being held everywhere, and the predictions that were being made were very bold but very realistic at the time. We heard how the traditional travel agent would be a thing of the past within 5 years, in reality a large number of agents did close down but they were the ones who did not react quick enough, what we have now is a large number of travel agents who add real value to their customers, they are more consultants rather than just people who book flights. The public will always need advice for a complex or very expensive purchase.Corporate travel would move on line – in reality even though a large amount of corporate travel is now booked online, we are seeing the global TMC getting bigger and using online technology to push their service.The airline.com websites would take over the market. What we have seen is that airline.com have got as big as they can, customers want to compare, and for complex trips the airline websites can not handle this, so they are important in the airline distribtion but the fact that all the major airlines now supply all fares to Travelport is a fact that the traditional channel still exists.The GDS would be history – as I hope to show you the GDS have evolved to meet the needs of both the suppliers and the customers.In reality ecommerce has just become another channel for you to distrbiute via, it is not different to how you communicate with your customer via phone or face to face.
This slide was taken from a phocuswright survey of the european online travel market. As you can see from this slide there are a number of interesting things changing. Firstly we are seeing a levelling off and even a reduction in the amount of bookings being generated via the airline web sites, this is both on the traditional airline side as well as the low cost carrier web sites. I believe this reductions is very important to everyone in this room, as I believe we will see similar numbers in Africa over the coming years, but to be honest I don’t think it will be as aggressive as Europe was, and this is where there is scope for you all to leap frog.You need to remember that however much you want a customer to visit your site and book via the direct channel the consumer is the one who makes the decision, the average traveler is becoming more savvy and understands how to find the best fares and rates and due to the current economic situation they are more price concious than before. I know there is a large number of tour operators in this room and the good news for you is that the tour opertor piece of the pie is growing very quickly this supports the theory that the consumer wants choice.To give you some numbers on how we are seeing tour operators growing in Europe:Gross Bookings of Tour Operator web sites increased from 12% in 2006 to 13% in 2007, exceeding € 7.6 billion.In next 3 years, tour operators web site revenues are expected to grow at an annual rate of 17% to €12 billion in 2010The share of tour operators going online as part of the supplier direct market landscape is projected to increase from 19% in 2007 to 21% by 2010 As I will describe Travelport has a number of key products that will help any tour operator, travel agent, hotel, car hire company or airline increase their total offering online to make your sites as competitive as possible.
So what are our customers saying they need against a background of economic decline and ever increasing complexity…. Agency customers say they need a combination of global content, to take their travellers anywhere in the world, mixed with deep local supplier content – particularly airlines and hotels. They also want the reassurance of booking at the best possible prices. As margins come increasingly under pressure, they need GDS expertise to increase efficiencies and reduce cost giving them more time to focus on serving their customers. And finally, they need innovative ways to differentiate themselves so as to retain and win new customers. Supplier customers are looking for help from the GDSs to give them the broadest market reach and practical local support. They are continuously seeking new ways to generate revenue and increase yield, such as merchandising to agents and consumers, whilst also making operational efficiencies. And critically, they need partners committed to understanding their unique needs.
What we are seeing currently in the travel distribution business is a very complex situation. The travel industry used to be very simple, you chose a GDS, you had access to all the content you required and there was only a small number of ways a customer could book their trip. This has all changed. All suppliers are looking to de-comodotise their offering to the end consumer, we are seeing all parts of the service are being productised. The airlines will look to apply additional charges for exit row seats, extra baggage and many other items. Hotels are starting to charge for access to the executive lounge, or passes to the health club.Content is fragmented, as yield control systems have become more complex in all areas of the value chain, the content that is available in one system is limited and not guaranteed.Technology is moving very quickly, the number of open source systems that are available and ease of providing APIs to allow you to connect to content you never had access to before are increasing – but this make your life more difficult as you need to manage multiple connections to multiple vendors not to mention the complexity of how to package.User behavior – the consumers are being more savvy and understand how to shop for the best deal in the market, travel agents require more of the functionality that is online. for example shopping for a hotel based on a map rather than an old fashioned “green screen” display.
OK the title of this slide is an over used term. But content is king both in the GDS business but also in the online space. If you only have limited content then your appeal to the end consumer is going to be limited. If you only have access to a small number of suppliers then you will not be able to give the consumer the choice they require. If you are a hotel chain or a tour operator you need to be able to provide the added on services that the consumer expects – and needs! A consumer does not want to go to 6 different web sites to book a complete package if you can offer all the relevant components then you are winning the battle. This is the same for the traditional travel agency, you need to ensure you have all the content available as you are now competing with online web sites therefore customers will become more focused and will shop around.Travelport has been very focused at securing content as I mentioned in the opening slide we have access to over 500 airlines, 85,000 hotels and numerous car hire companies, through our relationship with GTA we can also offer tours, packages, airport transfer, restaurant reservations to name but a few.What is key is that Travelport is the only GDS to secure full content agreements with over 110 carriers, what does this mean ? Basically the airline guarantee’s to provide travelports GDS with the same content (fares and availablilty) as they provide via their direct channels this means that the content available to you is the same as the consumers will see on the airline.com web site.Travelport is the only GDS to secure a global long term full content agreement with British Airways Travelport is the only GDS to secure a full content agreement with Air France / KLM that covers AfricaAnd Travelport is the only GDS to secure a global full content agreement with Lufthansa.Travelport has also been very focused on securing access to the “low cost carriers” in Europe Travelport has full access to content on numerous low cost carriers including easyjet, and in Africa we have already secured agreements with Mango, Comair, and Travelport is the only GDS with exclusive access to Kalula. We are also in the process of finalising agreements with several other key African low cost carriers that will only help strengthen our content offering to the trave industry in Africa.
Travelport is very pleased to be able to offer to its customers the new Universal API, which we are in the process of performing final testing on at the present time.All GDS and other suppliers have APIs there are a mix of terms, ranging from API to XML to EDI to name but three, but all of the systems in place today have one thing in common in that they only talk to the one system. Travelport has developed a new API that will allow users to not only talk to one of the travelport GDS but also to other systems via the one connection. This development will be a major change, as any online travel company today has to manage multiple connections to multiple host systems, but imagine that you access the travelport GDS Universal API and via this connection you can access not only Travelports GDS but any of our competitors systems, or a local content provider in your market. Travelport will create a single PNR that will be fully interactive, so if you cancel the PNR all PNRS in the supplier systems will be cancelled.The universal API will reduce the number of multiple searches you are currently doing which in turn will reduce costs Business logic will be applied at the host level therefore if you only want to book a certain supplier the logic can be set up to your own business rules, therefore reducing your development time frame.Universal API will truly give you the online travel company the choice of what to book when, but without the development and heart ache that is required today.This technology is also being deployed to our travel agency customers via the universal desktop application which will be available during 2010.
At Travelport, we are planning to create this collaborative experience for travellers through a partnership with Microsoft The Travelport Journey Manager solution targets the lucrative and under-served SME business traveller market, creating new opportunities and revenue streams for travel firms, suppliers and airlines. Microsoft technology – Microsoft Virtual Earth, Windows Live, CRM, and SQL Server – combined with Travelport’s airline solutions provide innovative mapping, location and search functionality with comprehensive travel content and data services. This enables suppliers and airlines to efficiently meet individual customer needs with a high level of personalization and deliver a wide range of new sales and service opportunities.Journey manager will be released during 2010.
As you can see even though travelport is a global company our products and solutions are targetted at meeting the needs of the local market. However we reaslise that what works somewhere might not work in another part of the world. Because of this we are focused on complimenting our global products with local solutions and because of this we have build up strong relations with local partners both in South Africa as well as the rest of Africa.Aswell as offering our API solutions we realise that not all customers require this and therefore we are able to offer a white label internet booking engine called Galieo online travel. This aggregates all local content in to a easy to use interface while accessing travelports global content.We have also been working closely with Mark and Paul Clifford at Real time here in Johannesburg – I have been very impressed with their booking engine technology and believe as you can see from the screen shots above they are agregating content from the GDS as well as local sources. Real time have also been able to change the user experience and have started to deploy map based shopping tools for hotels to get away from list based. We are also working with another South African company called Travelsoft in several areas.All of the above companies are taking travelports technology but are able to provide a local angle to it to meet your needs.
I would like to thank you for your time and listening to me, I will be around for the next 2 days and will be happy to go in to more detail about the things I have discussed, and if we have time I would now like to open up for questions.