TUI Travel signs Direct Connect Agreement with Travelport GDS

One of the world’s leading travel groups, TUI Travel, has signed a multi-year agreement with Travelport GDS to distribute its extensive car content to users of its Galileo GDS. The content, which will be made available through a direct connect to TUI’s Car-Hire Platform, will be available later in the summer.

The agreement marks the start of a broader working relationship between the two companies. Further content and distribution agreements are expected over the coming months.

The TUI Car-Hire Platform run by its subsidiary MicronNexus, GmbH, a leading provider of interfaces to both local and global car rental suppliers, gives customers access to car rental in nearly 24,000 car hire locations and over 50,000 broker locations with over 100 local and international suppliers.

Galileo users will be able to make, cancel and amend bookings for car hire through their normal GDS booking processes, whilst offering their customers important new local car hire content not previously bookable on the system such as Auto Jardim in Portugal, Avia in the Canary Islands or Nizza Cars in Andalucia.

Jane Lewis, Travelport GDS’s Senior Director, Hospitality and Car Rental, EMEA and Asia Pacific, said, “We are always looking for relevant new content to offer our agency customers so that they can offer even better customer service and increase their revenue streams at a time of reduced commissions. The new car hire content provided through this agreement with TUI Travel really complements our current content offering. This is great news!”

Andreas Nau, TUI Travel PLC’s Head of Product Platforms and Strategic Buying, added, “We are delighted to sign this deal with Travelport GDS. It is another step in cementing our position as leader in the area of car hire technology with our MicronNexus platform and is a win win scenario for everyone. Our loyal local car hire suppliers now have the possibility to approach new customer segments otherwise out of their reach. We will also benefit from distribution to leisure and corporate travel agents as well as online travel distributors.”

Initially the new content will be made available to users of Galileo but the agreement will also extend to users of the Worldspan platform over the coming months.

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