Flight Centre has begun cutting over to Travelport Universal Desktop system, a year after the GDS announced the company would be its launch partner.
The global agency chain was announced as launch partner in July 2010 but agency locations in Queensland, Australia, began updating their desktop systems about a month ago.
The plan is to extend it to further Flight Centre locations in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa with the UK slated for the first half of 2012.
Universal Desktop is designed to speed up and simplify travel bookings by aggregating GDS and other third party content on one platform.
When the technology was unveiled, the GDS claimed it would complete a flight, hotel and car-hire booking in the same time as it takes for just the flight component.
The technology also aims to increase agent productivity through the provision of travel management and workflow tools within the system.
Nina Bell, Travelport's vice president of strategic programmes and in charge of live implementation of the solution said:
"Agents are seeing productivity savings but in terms of quatification we don't know yet."
Behind Universal Desktop is Travelport's Universal API which draws content from multiple sources and makes it available via one platform.
In March, business travel agent HRG agreed to use the API to gain access to low-cost carriers and other content.
The Universal Desktop technology was initially piloted with seven agencies in 2009 with a plan to extend testing to about 30 customers in Spring 2010.
However, the GDS revised the target to focus on Flight Centre and implement developments based on feedback from its travel consultants.
Travelport says it remains on track and is working with an unspecified number of beta customers, including GTM as its first in the UK, 'prior to broader roll out'.
The company plans to give a fuller picture during its November earnings call and says some customers are still at the contract stage.
Collaborative and social tools are still in the development road map for the solution but are unlikely to be phased in this year.