OAG Worldwide and TravelSky Technologies Ltd, provider of information technology solutions for China's air travel and tourism industry, have signed a five-year co-operative agreement.

Published: 07 Jun 2005

OAG Worldwide and TravelSky Technologies Ltd, provider of information technology solutions for China's air travel and tourism industry, have signed a five-year co-operative agreement.

Zhu Xiaoxing, chief executive officer, TravelSky said that the new arrangements allow TravelSky and OAG to better serve the Chinese travel market including travel agents who now have access to more accurate global content and therefore can better serve their customers and additionally our airlines customers who now have greater visibility and reach.

OAG's services will enable TravelSky to effectively manage and distribute the schedules of an ever-increasing number of participating overseas carriers.

Other than this, TravelSky has also integrated into their reservation system OAG’s Automated Routing Connection service (ARCS) created for Air China. This new service, a first in China’s aviation industry, will ensure maximum visibility of Air China’s connecting schedules in the TravelSky reservation system, as per the deal. This service will also be available to all other Chinese airlines and international airlines to promote their connections to and from this rapidly expanding market.

The objective of the partnership between TravelSky and OAG include increased rate of supply of OAG's global schedules database into TravelSky's Distribution System used by over 6000 Chinese travel agents to facilitate greater visibility and accuracy within the Chinese travel reservations market for the 1000 airlines that OAG manages and distributes schedules data for; increased rate of supply to OAG of airline schedules for the entire domestic airline market; OAG supplies schedules data to all other global reservations and airline reservation systems; use of OAG's routes generation tools that provides the logic for airlines to ensure connecting services are properly displayed in the TravelSky system; the distribution by TravelSky to the Chinese travel community of OAG's unique Travel Planner application which enables the planning of complex travel itineraries and includes worldwide destination information.

According to OAG statistics, China’s international scheduled passenger flights have increased by 13% over June 2004 and its domestic market by 18% compared to a worldwide average of 5% for all traffic. “This makes China the world's fastest growing aviation market in the world. The entry of China into the World Trade Organisation coupled with the new availability of visas for international travel, has increased both domestic and international demand and necessitated the creation of a comprehensive and accurate database for TravelSky,” according to a release.