Leading travel commerce platform, Travelport announced a new content and data partnership agreement with the online travel platform of the Alibaba Group, Alitrip.
The partnership will give Alitrip access to Travelport’s pricing and availability data to support its own fare and shopping platform, as well as the use of Travelport’s suite of flagship shopping products: ePricing and Search Control Console, which will improve Alitrip’s content richness and operational efficiency.
This partnership agreement also enables Alitrip to expand their merchant and customer base outside of mainland China, working with Travelport and Travelport enabled agencies. On the other side of the equation, Travelport’s connected agents and partners will benefit from having a simpler access to the growing demand from mainland China by participating on the Alitrip platform.
Zheng Zhou, General Manager of Alitrip’s Transportation Business Unit said: “We are impressed with the quality of Travelport’s content feed which supports our online platform. With this partnership we can now have a more efficient way to engage the wider agency community and bring them onto the Alitrip platform. This will provide our users with the best fare options.”
Mark Meehan, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Travelport said: “We are delighted to have Alitrip as our newest online partner. Travelport has led the development of technologies that support online travel platforms such as Alitrip. We are excited to work with the most successful name in e-commerce and help bring that same success to online travel commerce.”
UK-based Travelport is a leading travel commerce platform providing distribution, technology, payment and other solutions for the $8 trillion global travel and tourism industry. It has a presence in over 170 countries, approximately 3,400 employees and 2014 net revenue of $2.1 billion.
Alibaba Group's - Alitrip, previously known as "Taobao Travel," was only established in October last year as an independent online travel booking platform. As a latecomer to the ultra-competitive Chinese OTA market, Alitrip can leverage partnerships with highly experienced specialists like Travelport to give it an edge and close the gap with its rivals.
