Travelport

LANGLEY, U.K — Travelport GDS, one of the world’s leading global distribution system (GDS) providers operating both the Galileo and Worldspan platforms, today announced an agreement to jointly deliver an integrated expense management and booking solution that combines IBM’s Global Expense Reporting Solutions (GERS) with the capability to integrate all Travelport GDS bookings. This agreement brings to Travelport and IBM customers an expense management solution with integrated travel booking data regardless of how the transaction was booked.

Under the agreement, Travelport GDS will focus on its core competencies of delivering GDS content and Traversa™, the company’s online travel management booking solution.

IBM will provide expense management services via its well known GERS solution that enables employees to submit, approve, reimburse, and monitor T&E and other business related expenses with an efficient automated workflow.

Travelers whose organizations deploy Travelport solutions coupled with GERS will enjoy the convenience of having credit card billings automatically matched against travel reservation transactions. Corporations will benefit because greater visibility into booked versus actual spend, is a critical component of effective corporate travel policy compliance.

The joint solution offers:

  • Increased traveler satisfaction and user adoption
  • Enhanced corporate control and travel policy compliance
  • Streamlined travel and expense management reimbursement processes
  • Expert Global delivery and localized support
  • Robust enterprise business travel Intelligence

“Our new agreement with Travelport reflects our commitment to the business travel marketplace,” said Ray Curatolo, director of GERS for IBM. “It is a key step in our strategy to demonstrate IBM’s leadership in global end-to-end travel management.”

“We are delighted to team with IBM to offer our joint customers an end-to-end travel policy management and travel spend management solution, one that is currently in use by IBM itself, which has one of the largest corporate travel management programs in the world today,” said Armin Meier, chief commercial officer, Travelport GDS. “This integrated solution will provide our mutual customers with innovative expense management capabilities, helping companies control travel and expense processing costs and manage, analyze and retrieve reports on business travel-related operations. Importantly, it will also facilitate travel policy compliance.”

According to Meier, “Our ability to support large global corporations such as IBM on a worldwide basis through local services and content is a unique distinctive competence that adds quantitative value to our corporate customers. Integrating the GERS expense management solution with Traversa will further add to our corporate value proposition by applying the capabilities, experience and technology that IBM, working with Travelport, has gained within its own business.”

IBM GERS is part of IBM Managed Business Process Services (MBPS), a unit that automates and standardizes core business processes for clients in areas such as human resources, accounting, mortgage origination and expense reporting. IBM GERS is deployed in over 90 countries and processes more than 20 million expense reports annually. Clients using IBM GERS can increase the process efficiency and cost effectiveness of their overall travel expense management.

About Traversa | Traversa is an online booking tool that allows business travelers quickly and cost-effectively to shop and book their own reservations while enabling corporations to maintain travel policies, maximize supplier agreements, standardize processes, and achieve high online adoption.

IBM was one of the first large global corporations to adopt Traversa which is currently used by over 250,000 IBMers across 16 countries worldwide.

Traversa has over 330,000 active traveler profiles and processes in excess of 1.5m booking transactions annually.

About Travelport | Travelport is one of the world's largest travel conglomerates, offering broad-based business services to companies operating in the global travel industry. The company is comprised of the global distribution system (GDS) business that includes the Worldspan and Galileo brands; GTA, a leading global, multi-channel provider of hotel and ground services; IT Services & Software, which hosts mission critical applications and provides business and data analysis solutions for major airlines. With 2008 revenues of $2.5 billion, Travelport operates in 160 countries and has over 5,500 employees.

Travelport also owns approximately 48% of Orbitz Worldwide (NYSE: OWW), a leading global online travel company.

Travelport is a private company owned by The Blackstone Group, One Equity Partners, Technology Crossover Ventures and Travelport management.

Jill Brenner
Director, Corporate Communications

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