BEING stranded at an airport is an airline passenger’s worst nightmare. In the first six months of 2017, FlightStats shows that over one in four major airline flights within the Middle East and Africa (130,140 out of 599,150) suffered from some form of disruption.

But the real nightmare only begins once flights are canceled. When flights are disrupted, passengers must scramble to find available rooms in local hotels. Passengers lucky enough to find rooms must then remain in the airport, standing in long lines, with a lack of real time communication, to wait for besieged airline employees to hand out paper vouchers that are required be presented at a hotel to obtain a room.

It’s how the disruption process always has been handled — an aggravating, uncertain and inefficient experience for passengers and for airlines alike. But thanks to new, industry-first mobile-based technology now available from Travelport, the pain of airline disruptions is now a thing of the past.

Travelport, a leading travel commerce platform, announced recently the launch of Travelport Resolve — a new product for airlines that puts the traveler first, automating the sourcing and distribution of hotel rooms, air rebooking and meal and transport needs into a single, seamless and paperless experience when flight are cancelled or delayed.

Travelport Resolve enables airlines to react to disruptions with speed and accuracy, immediately communicating with passengers after an itinerary change so passengers can use their mobile device to quickly select and book their preferred hotel from available local accommodation options.

In a trial with a major US airline, passengers loved how easy and fast it was to use Travelport Resolve: “I thought it was fantastic...(and) user-friendly...! This made my day! There was no waiting, no phone calls and I could book it all on my iPhone before I even deboarded the plane!” said one passenger. Other passengers called it “a smooth process” and “a great experience.”

“With a few simple touches on their mobile device, Travelport helps disrupted passengers to bypass the frustration of hotel and meal voucher lines and quickly be on their way to a comfortable hotel room,” said Derek Sharp, Travelport’s senior vice president and managing director, air commerce.

“For airlines, Travelport Resolve helps carriers improve customer service performance during disruptions, avoiding serious damage to their brand and opportunities to build their relationships with affected customers.”

Travelport Resolve, developed from an idea developed in the Travelport Labs Accelerator program, transforms the current labor-intensive, manual hotel sourcing, booking, and payment process that typically plagues airlines during disruptive irregular operations (“IROPS”) situations.

By combining Travelport’s mobile expertise and its ability to source and book hotel rooms across the globe, allowing airlines to automate and monitor the entire hotel distribution process, Travelport Resolve demonstrates the unique power of Travelport’s platform to improve the travel experience for airlines and their customers.

Travelport Resolve also provides airlines with actionable insights into IROPS, including hotel-related costs, room usage, passenger status and activity patterns, with up-to-the-minute reporting tools that analyze the true cost of disruptions to an airline’s business and identify improvements an airline can make to its service.

The product will soon include predictive features enabling airlines to recognize potential irregular operations/IROPS situations and local conditions or events that may create limited hotel availability. Travelport Resolve will then automatically procure room inventory needed to meet passenger demand.

Travelport is a travel commerce platform providing distribution, technology, payment, mobile and other solutions for the global travel and tourism industry. With a presence in approximately 180 countries, and approximately 4,000 employees, our 2016 net revenue was over $2.3 billion.

Travelport is comprised of:

• A travel commerce platform through which it facilitates travel commerce by connecting the world’s leading travel providers with online and offline travel buyers in a proprietary business-to-business (B2B) travel marketplace. Travelport has a leadership position in airline merchandising, hotel content and rate distribution, mobile travel commerce and a pioneering B2B payment solution that addresses the needs of travel intermediaries to efficiently and securely settle travel transactions.

• Technology Services through which it provides critical IT services to airlines, such as shopping, ticketing, departure control and other solutions, enabling them to focus on their core business competencies and reduce costs.

Travelport is headquartered in Langley, UK. The Company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and trades under the symbol “TVPT”. — SG