Travelport and Amazon Web Services Announce Partnership
Travelport, a worldwide leader in travel retail, today announced a strategic, long-term collaboration with Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) 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-personalized retailing, will focus on optimizing 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 startup community.
“The travel industry has struggled to keep up with the pace of change in digital retail,” said Greg Webb, Chief Executive Officer at Travelport. “This landmark collaboration is specifically designed to address just that. AWS’s retail heritage makes them uniquely qualified to optimize 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.”
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 personalized travel booking experience. In addition, Travelport will use AWS Managed Services (AMS) to provide trusted operational expertise to help optimize platform efficiency and security.
Optimizing Travelport+
Travelport+ is an extensive, next-generation platform that creates a simplified, capability-rich marketplace for travel retailing. To optimize 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,” said Adam Selipsky, Incoming CEO of Amazon Web Services, Inc. “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. With people around the world beginning to return to travel, we look forward to working with Travelport to help the travel industry continue to innovate.”
AWS will provide Travelport+ with proven global infrastructure and security that is built to satisfy the requirements of organizations 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.
Driving Innovation
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 startup 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.
On Thursday 24 June, David Peller, Managing Director, Travel and Hospitality at AWS will discuss the collaboration with Travelport during the upcoming virtual event, Hello Modern Retailing. To register to attend the event, hosted by Travelport, please click here.