GDS Platform Issue Becoming ‘Irrelevant’ Sez Travelport CEO

Ever since United announced that it would move off the Apollo host system—which it built in the late 1960s and early 1970s—there has been speculation that Travelport will at some point put the Apollo platform out to pasture.

Apollo is also one of two GDS platforms used by Travelport agents in North America. The other is Worldspan, which it acquired in 2007. Some Japanese agents also use Apollo. And Travelport operates a third GDS platform, Galileo, in Europe and some other parts of the world.

With United’s migration to the HP Shares system, Travelport would seem to have little incentive to maintain all three platforms.

But Gordon Wilson, Travelport CEO, has steadfastly maintained that the company would never force travel agents to convert to a different system.

‘No forced migration’
The question of an Apollo sunset came up again at The Beat Live, a business travel conference held recently in New Orleans.

During an onstage interview, Wilson reiterated the company’s “no forced migration” stance, citing the messy forced conversion of System One agents to the Amadeus system in 1997.

That move so distressed agents that some considered suing Amadeus.

A question of relevance
But as Travelport’s technology progresses, the issue of which platform agents use “will become more irrelevant,” Wilson added.

“We have common-rated some of the most dynamic parts [of the systems] on a shared platform,” he said.

Smartpoint, a Travelport application that “evolves” the three desktops with interactive technology, has done much to move Travelport beyond the platform issue.

It supports commands from any GDS in a cryptic environment, enabling agents to use whatever GDS language they are used to. It also provides point-and-click functionality across the board.

Looking toward the future
With an eye toward the future, Travelport has invested in Locomote, an Australian travel technology company.

Locomote has developed a corporate booking tool that will replace Traversa, Travelport’s corporate tool which Wilson has said is approaching the end of its useful life.

The average age of Locomote employees is 23, so “everything they build is with mobile in mind,” Wilson said.

“I don’t think anyone in their 20s wants to talk to anybody anymore,” he added.