Travelport launched on Wednesday an artificial intelligence-powered search feature that the global travel retail platform said will help agencies find “the perfect” trip match for travelers from among billions of options.
The Content Curation Layer (CCL) will use both AI and machine learning to provide a range of retail ready results by sorting through multi-source content that’s been aggregated. In turn, it provides search results at a faster rate than the average response time of an airline search, the company said.
“Travelport’s role in the increasingly complex travel industry is to take millions of pieces of disparate information and make it simple for both travel agencies and providers to understand, search, sell and service,” Travelport CEO Greg Webb said. “We believe AI and machine learning are powerful tools to do just that.”
The new tool will be on the Travelport Plus platform, which launched in 2021 as a unified platform to replace the company's three legacy global distribution systems.
“The [CCL] will allow travel agencies to provide travelers the right range of normalized, enriched, bookable content at speed, via a singular search screen,” Webb added. “Used for all content sources ... the CCL allows agents to compare apples to oranges in an apples-to-apples way.”
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A key feature of the new tool, the company said, is the Content Optimizer, a Travelport Plus product that gives clients more control over content including NDC and traditional content. Agents can also use the Content Optimizer to refine search results, boost revenue optimization and fine tune content choice to prevent overload.
“Our travel agency partners know their travelers well, and Content Optimizer gives agencies the ability to set their own rules and customize the type of results that are prioritized,” Webb said. “This innovative product offers agencies more control of their content, with the support of AI to save agencies more time and money.”
Travelport made headlines in March for layoffs for agility purposes.
“Travelport is focused on driving revenue growth while operating as efficiently and effectively as possible,” Katie Cline, global head of external communications for Travelport, said in an email at the time.
The company’s move came after funding news in December, which bolstered its position with a $570 million investment.