Australia’s online travel service Webjet Limited has entered into a supply and distribution alliance with Travelport.

Published: 01 May 2006

Australia’s online travel service Webjet Limited has entered into a supply and distribution alliance with Travelport.

Webjet says this association has the potential to substantially change the landscape relating to the sale of hotels and accommodation in the Australian market.

Webjet managing director David Clarke said Travelport will supply Webjet on special terms, access to its global hotel database which currently comprises approximately 60,000 properties. On its part, the company will be releasing a number of marketing initiatives over the next six months.

“Webjet will, through its travel service aggregator, substantially increase the prominence of hotel availability, in conjunction with the sale of international and domestic flights and in addition, on a stand alone basis. As a part of Webjet’s service aggregator technology, Webjet will be in a position of offering its huge domestic database integrated hotel selections linked automatically to selected flights and itinerary dates and payable through the one Webjet card transaction,” said Clarke.

Clarke says unlike specialist hotel brokers that operate in the Australian market that have a limited range of properties, the dimension of the Travelport hotel inventory is “simply enormous”.

“The range and choice which this will provide Webjet’s customers compared to specialist hotel brokers, is simply beyond comparison. Uniquely, because of the nature of the infrastructure which Webjet is ab le to tap into electronically, Webjet itself will incur no significant incremental operating costs and will, as a result be able, according to tactical and strategic opportunities, to adopt a quite aggressive marketing approach at both a product and distribution level,” said Clarke.

Travelport’s managing director - Pacific, John Guscic said: “Travelport believes that there are substantial additional marketing opportunities through Webjet’s extraordinary reach into the Australian travel market and that a historical process, where consumers may have chosen to separate hotel purchasing from flight purchasing, is capable of substantial change and modification to the benefit of the consumer. In addition, Travelport, through its Australian hotel and rate to go sites, which have an equivalently deep reach into the Australian market, will provide a link into Webjet for the facilitation of domestic and international flights. This provides an extremely valuable, symmetrical and strategic association to both company’s benefit.”

In another development, Webjet announced that it has completed technology development of WebMatch, which is an Australian travel industry first for online travel distribution and marketing, according to the company.

“It is a concept which is designed to ultimately monetorise the search activity which is occurring within Webjet’s travel service aggregator and relate that search activity by our customers to special targeted offers available from our airline trading partners, hotel suppliers and other product suppliers, in an interactive and intelligent manner. It essentially creates a targeted value proposition for our customers and for our suppliers, with special offers and unique marketing benefits can be related to the search activity of our customer base, including, video files, sound files and graphics,” said Clarke.

Clarke added: “In many ways, WebMatch completely demolishes the myth that internet selling is a passive medium and in fact, imposes a structured distribution message in a manner which is difficult to achieve in bricks and mortar travel agencies, where there are many layers involved in the customer interaction with the agency and many consultants often spread over many States with an amount of information that may be difficult to manage and process.”

Webjet will shortly be rolling out demonstration packs and is currently in discussions with a number of its trading partners. The company expects that commercial operation of WebMatch will be well in train before June 30.