Travelport has seen its overall revenue increase by 9% in the second quarter of 2016, with overall growth for the year so far at 8%.
The travel technology company hit $606 million in revenue for the three months ending June 2016, giving it a total of $1.22 billion in the year-to-date.
Income from air activities on its travel commerce platform reached $426 million in Q2, up 6% year-on-year, whilst non-air jumped 22% to $148 million over the same period.
Travelport president and CEO, Gordon Wilson, says that the strategy to grow the "Beyond Air" services could see it coming in at around $1 billion in revenue a year by 2020.
Adjusted EBITDA for the first six months of 2016 is $293 million (up 7% y/y), with a 1% increase to $139 million for Q2, the company says in its latest earnings report issued today.
The demise of European online travel agency Unister in recent weeks, which has filed for insolvency in Germany, has led to Travelport writing down $11 million in revenue, Wilson says.
Despite wider industry concerns over the fall-out from the UK's referendum to leave the European Union, not least with some analysts forecasting a slowing of the national and possibly continental economy, Wilson says the company (which gets around 8% of its revenue from the UK) is not anticipating any significant impact.
Travelport's net revenue and adjusted EBITDA full-year guidance for 2016 remains unchanged, he says.
Meanwhile, not directly related to the Unister issue, Wilson says mid-tier OTAs need to get smarter if they want to challenge the likes of the big two brands in the marketplace (Priceline Group and Expedia Inc, both of which are customers, incidentally).
Companies such as Travix, a recent Travelport signing, are figuring out ways of "demonstrating value" to their customers that set them apart from the giants of the online intermediary world, Wilson says:
"They [mid-tier OTAs] need to establish how to carve out a niche for themselves in order to compete."
Some are co-branding content from other providers, whilst others are bundling services or products in innovative ways, he adds.
Still, Wilson believes that the large OTAs are allowing the online hotel booking sector, in particular, to thrive.
The fact that they spend billions on marketing and investment in technology, which helps bring in guests that ordinarily a hotel would have struggled to attract, means that they cannot be seen as competitive, regardless of the direct vs intermediary debate.
Wilson also believes that the growth in ancillary sales is currently being driven by leisure customers, rather than corporate travellers, primarily due to many ancillary services already bundled together through business traveller-focused products from airlines.
This will change, he predicts, as services become more fragmented (meaning more products to up- and cross-sell), although this will eventually shift back as more carriers and intermediaries use technology to bundle even more services and fares.