09 June 2010

Travelport courts non-air leisure boom with upgraded tool

Travelport has launched an updated leisure portal for agents that will offer new content including B&Bs, campsites, budget hotels, hostels and even riads.

The GDS provider, which operates Galileo and Worldspan, has teamed up with Hostelworld.com to offer more budget type accommodation and will also offer tens of thousands more hotels thanks to content from HotelClub by Orbitz and Kuoni Connect.

Product from the car rental aggregator Cars by TUI will also be offered.

The company says the launch of Travelport Leisure, which is essentially an upgrade of its former Galileo Leisure portal, reflects a positive trend in growth potential of leisure spend globally which is expected to reach around $700 billion by 2014.

Travelport Leisure, which will be free to agents even if they don’t subscribe to Travelport, will also have better functionality allowing agents to add local content at a country level.

Travelport vice president, land and sea, Jane Lewis said: "We are seeing some very encouraging signs that leisure travel spend has really picked up again and much of this spend will be on non-air related products such as hotels and car hire.

"We believe this upgraded leisure booking tool is a logical way to work with the travel trade to take advantage of this significant opportunity and make booking leisure content and earning revenues on it even easier."

Travelport Leisure is being rolled out this June.

by Dinah Hatch