Kulula Air joins Galileo GDS
30. Jul, 2009
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Travelport GDS, one of the world’s leading global distribution system (GDS) providers, has today announced details of a new direct connect content agreement with kulula air – Southern Africa’s first and leading low fare airline. Under the new agreement, kulula air’s full content will be made available on the GDS channel for the first time via Galileo’s direct connect solution. The new, low cost carrier solution will enable agents to search create and hold kulula air flights in their preferred workflow in the Galileo GDS, providing travel agents with improved efficiency in the booking process.
Travelport confirmed that the development of its direct connect product was a reflection of the growing importance of the low cost air sector and the subsequent demands of its travel agency customers to have the content available through the GDS channel. The new direct connect participation option, which complements the traditional GDS channel offering a further 60 low cost carriers, has sparked considerable interest amongst the low cost carrier community.
The solution, already being widely used by travel agencies throughout Europe, was introduced early last year with launch partner easyJet. Since its launch, travel agents have reported greatly-improved efficiency and productivity compared to booking via the web, which typically takes agents four times longer. In contrast to low cost carrier websites (and other GDS providers), the Galileo direct connect solution uniquely gives agents the ability to book low cost carrier and traditional airline flights in the same passenger name record (PNR) - for example, combining kulula air and British Airways segments.
By booking the low cost carrier content via the GDS, agents also benefit from the automatic handoff of the booking data to their mid or back office systems for accounting purposes.
Gary Broomberg, Commercial Vice President for Travelport GDS in Southern Africa, commented: “In today’s challenging economic environment, we are seeing more and more businesses in Southern Africa wanting to tightly manage their travel expenditure and this technology effectively enables travel agents to compare low cost alternatives such as kulula air alongside traditional airfares in their preferred booking environment. It also provides low cost airlines with a very efficient and simple means of distribution.”
“Our successful implementation across Europe has indicated that booking a low cost flight using this solution is significantly faster than any previous method used by travel agents. We are delighted to now be able to offer the same efficiency in Southern Africa on kulula air’s flights,” continued Broomberg.
Stuart Cochrane, kulula air’s Executive Manager for Sales & Route Development further expanded on the solution saying, “We firmly believe in making our content available to the travel trade in their preferred GDS booking environment and this new direct connect agreement with Galileo enables us to do just that. Galileo’s very extensive network of travel agencies across the region will also provide us with an efficient means of distribution and the opportunity to further grow our business, specifically through a channel as important as the travel trade.”
My name is Muzi Mohale a full-time travel blogger, your host at Travelwires.com responsible for all editorial on this blog. I blog about the travel and tourism industry in Africa. Apart from blogging about tourism, I also run 
if this is the case, then how come flight centre couldnt work with them?