Travelport to open Nairobi call centre hub for Africa operations

Online commerce travel platform, Travelport, is set to launch a call centre in Nairobi, signalling its plan to have Kenya serve as a regional hub for its operations in Africa.

The company says they will launch new products on Tuesday.

Travelport’s main competitors include locally available e-commerce travel platforms like Amadeus and Gogothere.

Amadeus is a Spain-based technology partner for global travel industry that has operations in East Africa while Gogothere.net is a local e-commerce travel platform launched in late 2014.

The Travelport platform is a business-to-business market place that brings together travel companies for online and offline buyers. Buyers are able to review various products like ticket prices offered by various airlines, choose and pay for packages.

Airlines have to sign a contract with the travel platform to distribute fares online.

So far, the UK-based platform has signed up more than 400 airlines, a majority of which are low-cost. Airlines like KQ can access the platform’s global network of travel agencies, a way of growing non-home market bookings.

Travel commerce platforms partner and work closely with airlines and travel agents, travel providers like hotels and sellers like websites and corporations and travel management companies who form the biggest travel buyers.

Last year, for instance, Kenya Airways booked more than 1.6 million international and domestic customers through the Amadeus platform.

The IT firm has had a global distribution partnership with the KQ for the past 20 years during which time the national carrier implemented different Amadeus solutions, including Amadeus Altea IT suite to manage reservations, ticketing and departure control processes.