Social Media and Marketing

Travelport says it has become the only global GDS to exclusively sell its own GDS advertising. The company is selling its GDS advertising exclusively through internal advertising consultants.

Published: 02 Mar 2010

Travelport says it has become the only global GDS to exclusively sell its own GDS advertising. The company is selling its GDS advertising exclusively through internal advertising consultants.

GDS advertising allows travel suppliers to reach travel agents with relevant promotional and product information at the critical point of sale, as they search for air, hotel and car products information by destination market.

“Travelport is developing sales and marketing capabilities which will result in bringing the relevance and clarity of Google-like search advertising to the travel agent’s desktop,” said Paul Hesser, Travelport GDS vice president, Advertising and Merchandising Solutions.

“With plans to roll-out the Travelport Universal Desktop later this year, we will accelerate the move from primarily a distribution vehicle to a strategic sales and marketing platform for airlines, hotels, car rental companies and other travel providers, offering more integrated and targeted messaging opportunities, as well as the ability to deliver robust graphical ads.”

To do this effectively requires close coordination of several key functions - consultative advertising account managers, travel expertise, and leading edge technology, Hesser said.

As part of this transition, Travelport has established an advertising operations and support team that will utilise an ad serving platform to deliver campaigns across Travelport’s product portfolio to ensure that advertisers get the highest return on their advertising programmes.

The platform will be positioned to support merchandising when used with the Travelport Universal Desktop, which will seamlessly unify selling and merchandising programmes, automate processes for travel agencies and allow diverse content to be accessed easily.