Travelport provides intuitive retail experience
- April 3, 2023
- Steve Rogerson
Travelport has launched Smartpoint Cloud to deliver a more intuitive retail experience, providing agents with an efficient way to sell and service travel.
UK technology company Travelport powers travel bookings for hundreds of thousands of travel suppliers worldwide. It has launched Smartpoint Cloud on Travelport+, a retailing platform built for agencies.
Travelport+ will now deliver a more intuitive and efficient way for travel agents to sell and service travel, all while increasing sales of higher-value services for suppliers. Through Smartpoint Cloud, agents will be able to search, filter, find and create tailored packages to suit different customer types, including fully customisable hotel and flight search options and NDC (new distribution capability) offers.
“Travel agents are the true retailers of our industry, and launching Smartpoint Cloud on Travelport+ will help our partners to deliver more value to both their clients and suppliers,” said Tom Kershaw, chief technology officer at Travelport. “Like any good tech innovation, these tools are simple to use and tackle key challenges faced by the travel advisor community. Smartpoint Cloud will further personalise agent workflows, help drive more revenue and, most importantly, impress customers.”
Built with the insight that agencies need to train and onboard new agents, the graphical user interface (gui) on Travelport+ is designed to provide a more user-friendly, simpler experience that speeds up agent workflow. Agents who prefer to work in a traditional (cryptic) interface have the flexibility to do so.
Smartpoint Cloud’s retailing storefront helps agents understand offers and make more informed decisions within the offerings of air, hotel, car and rail content available. It provides better criteria to allow easy comparisons from any source, including both NDC and traditional air content side by side.
Smartpoint Cloud also helps provide more transparency on offers, enabling agents to have the relevant information for comparison shopping at their fingertips. Additionally, the expanded Trip Quote capabilities integrate both GDS (global distribution system) and NDC offers, enabling agents to present more customised choices and better service, while offering travellers the ability to compare prices more easily. Smartpoint Cloud also enhances exchange capabilities to automate the calculation of accurate exchange costs and reduce errors.
“Smartpoint Cloud allows our agents to have access to all travel content, including NDC, in a modern web-based interface that allows them to work anywhere, on any device, anytime,” said Mike Cameron, CEO of Christopherson Business Travel. “It also allows our operations to be streamlined and will dramatically decrease our training costs. It’s clear Travelport understands what modern retailing should look like and this will be a game changer.”
As Smartpoint Cloud equips agents with tools that enable them to better understand the details of an offer, suppliers can expect to boost their sales by seamlessly showcasing their top brands and best products to their target customers. Supplier content is organised and promoted through concise and user-friendly matrix displays that enable effortless comparison of content from various sources, such as NDC and traditional airline content.
The attribute-enhanced searches, which show agents exactly what is included, help agents become better retailers and upsell travellers with options that are most important to them. Smartpoint Cloud also makes it easier for agents to service trips and manage exchanges independently.
Travelport was the first GDS with a complete offering for American Airlines (AA) NDC content, first on Travelport+ nearly a year ago, and now across the entire Travelport portfolio.
“We have seen the direction Travelport is taking towards supporting modern retailing,” said Anthony Rader, director of airline retailing technology at American Airlines. “The Smartpoint Cloud and Travelport+ are really compelling and advanced.”
Headquartered in London and operating in more than 165 countries around the world, Travelport is a technology company that powers bookings for hundreds of thousands of travel suppliers worldwide.