Meon Valley Travel supports travel tech giants in delivering a COVID tracking software plugin to enable up to date information for travel agents.
As an end-user Travelport might not be a well-known or household name, but within the travel industry, they are highly regarded. Travelport operates a commerce platform providing distribution, technology and payment for the global travel industry. Meon Valley travel is one of the key partners for Travelport in the UK and we’ve been working closely behind the scenes to develop a plugin for software to enable Meon Valley Travel staff to have all of the latest travel updates for customers at their finger tips.
Travelport Smartpoint – our proprietary state of the art point-of-sale application for travel agencies and travel management companies
This week Travelport launched the Travelport COVID-19 Smartpoint Plugin. The plugin provides travel agencies with the latest information on government restrictions, lockdowns and safety measures across the globe – all within the agent workflow.
The new tool provides detailed information on a range of topics, including: lockdown rules, entry requirements and quarantine measures for travellers. Country-level information can be displayed at the click of a button, allowing agents to advise their customers easily and instantly.
Kyle Moore, Global Head of Customer Strategy and Marketing, Travelport, said: “The travel ecosystem today is probably the most complex it has ever been, with government, airline, and hotel policies in every country constantly-changing. We’re making sure our agent partners no longer need to constantly leave their workflow to search for accurate and up-to-date information – greatly improving their efficiency in servicing their traveller customers.”
The image above shows Travelport Smartpoint’s innovative point-of-sale application, with an intuitive Graphical User Interface (GUI) and interactive seat map displaying choices for a flight between Sydney and London
The information in the Travelport COVID-19 Smartpoint Plugin is provided by global travel safety intelligence provider, Safeture, and is updated daily. “Our collaboration with Travelport will provide millions of travellers with the information they need to make informed decisions. With travel showing signs of a long-awaited recovery, creating this sense of security will be key to the reopening of economies and societies,” commented Magnus Hultman, Chief Executive Officer of Safeture.
“Working with the Travelport COVID-19 Smartpoint Plugin will allow our consultants to advise our customers with up-to-date destination information regarding this pandemic straight from the Smartpoint desktop. Travelport has turned this around quickly. It is great to know they are listening to the needs of the industry and are prepared to supply new leading-edge tools that can help aid recovery,” said Colin Boddy, Group Commercial Director, Meon Valley Travel Group.
The plugin is the latest Travelport initiative to arm travel agents with the safety information they need and to support a safe, healthy, and responsible return to travel. In recent months, Travelport has:
- Created the travel technology industry’s first COVID-19 Resource Hub; compiling information such as travel supplier policy trackers, relevant news, and guides. To date, the company has registered more than 80,000 visits to the hub.
- Contributed to the formation of various World Travel and Tourism Council protocols aimed at supporting a strong industry recovery.
- Helped airlines to use the Travelport Rich Content and Branding merchandising solution to communicate safety information to travel agents.
- Worked with hotel groups to utilise descriptive space on the GDS screens to communicate safety information.
A video demonstration of how the plugin works, can be found here.
