Travelport has named Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its preferred cloud partner, while outlining plans to draw on the tech giant’s portfolio to boost the performance and scalability of its operations.
The travel retail firm’s flagship offering is a global marketplace platform, dubbed Travelport+, that connects travel agencies with deals from airlines, hoteliers, car rental firms and rail operators so they can build holiday packages for their customers.
Travelport has confirmed it will draw on its partnership with Amazon to optimise the platform by migrating it to the AWS public cloud for scalability reasons and to improve the performance of the high performance computing (HPC) workloads that help Travelport+ run.
The company also said it plans to make use of AWS’s global datacentre and connectivity hubs to cache Travelport+ content at the edge for latency purposes too. “It will also use AWS technologies including HPC, storage, security, analytics, machine learning and databases to deliver faster, easier and [a] more personalised travel booking experience,” said AWS, in statement.
Additionally, the pair are also expected in due course to announce the launch of a tech startup accelerator programme that will be geared towards new market entrants that specialise in travel merchandising.
Travelport CEO Greg Webb said the company has made AWS its cloud provider of choice for this project due to its experience with working with other travel-related firms and the global reach of its infrastructure.
“The travel industry has struggled to keep up with the pace of change in digital retail. This landmark collaboration is specifically designed to address just that,” said Webb. “AWS’s retail heritage makes them uniquely qualified to optimise digital retail platforms, simplify complex environments and enable game-changing innovation in the travel retailing space. With AWS as our preferred cloud partner, we are going to create a simple, smarter and better future for travel retailing.”
Incoming AWS CEO Adam Selipsky said Travelport’s decision to migrate its flagship platform to the Amazon cloud is proof of its commitment to putting “the customer first”.
“By leveraging the broadest and deepest set of cloud capabilities and AWS’s proven global infrastructure, Travelport can enhance the performance of its platform and continue to develop new ways to simplify the travel booking experience,” he said.
“With people around the world beginning to return to travel, we look forward to working with Travelport to help the travel industry continue to innovate,” he added.
