Demand to continue: Webb
TRAVELPORT CEO Greg Webb believes that gathering storm clouds around the global economy are unlikely to impact business travel volumes significantly, with airlines likely to react to any downturn with lower fares and more availability.
Speaking exclusively with Travel Daily in Sydney earlier this week, Webb ( pictured) said while it was difficult to provide certain forecasts in the current environment, “all of the conversations that we’ve been having tend to point to the fact that corporate will continue to grow and rebound”.
“We are seeing some prerecessionary trends in the marketplace and that could have a ripple effect if operations decide to tighten their belts, but as of right now demand seems pretty strong,” he said.
Like the rest of the industry, Travelport has noted trends towards premium leisure destinations, while the ongoing closure of China is continuing to impact the global sector.
However, when restrictions on travel for China ease “you have to believe that we’ll see the same thing that we saw everywhere else, the floodgates will open and there will be a significant amount of outbound demand from China, which will again just provide such a boost to the travel economy”.
MEANWHILE Travelport continues to drive innovation in airline retailing, Webb said, with about 80% of the company’s customers worldwide migrating to the new Travelport+ platform by the end of the year.
The company has worked hard to address industry issues which became apparent during the pandemic, such as “the airlines making wholesale changes to the way that they deal with refunds and exchanges”.
“So we’ve been enhancing our refunds and exchange package to make it fully automated,” he said.
“They’re not simple transactions, there was such a deluge of cancellations, so we’ve tried to simplify that and make it as easy as possible”.
Webb noted that Travelport had for some time been talking about the need for the industry to move towards “true modern retailing”.
“Travel hasn’t kept up with that, and so we’ve been focused on trying to make sure that we’re providing true retail capability, whether it’s to a corporate seller, an OTA or TMC - and we feel good about where we are,” he said.
In the local market Travelport continues to make progress on its industry partnerships.
“We continue to feel like we’re in a great place to advance here,” he concluded.