Galileo International today announced an agreement to become the GDS provider for Bay Area Travel, Inc.. With this agreement, Bay Area Travel moved from Amadeus, their former GDS, to Galileo, on August 1, 2004. Bay Area Travel will work with Galileo to develop a fully integrated technology solution that is designed to deliver the greatest value to its customers by providing tools that maximize efficiency and drive revenue while at the same time, leveraging partnership opportunities with certain Cendant affiliates. 

Galileo’s front office desktop solutions will provide Bay Area Travel with access to content that is guaranteed and a greater range of solutions including Optimal Shopping SM, a robust, new, tool that enables agents to quickly find a substantially greater depth and breadth of itineraries and low-fare pricing options for customers traveling on wholly North American itineraries. Galileo’s highly flexible mid-office architecture will allow Bay Area Travel to build their own online booking engine through Galileo Web Services which provides the ability to link disparate operating platforms and applications quickly and at a relatively low cost making them critical technologies for travel.  With industry-leading tools such as these, Bay Area travel and its agents can enhance productivity and reduce time spent on non value-add tasks.

In addition, Bay Area Travel will utilize Galileo NeatAgent??, a dynamic packaging tool with unrestricted markup capability on highly discounted opaque type inventory and Galileo Web! Hotels SM which allows agents to offer their customers the same pricing advantages of the Internet with savings of up to 75% off published standard rates* and access to 6,600 hotel properties.  Utilizing Neat Agent and Galileo Web! Hotels will enable Bay Area Travel to increase revenue streams and help direct agents to higher profit margin sales. 

Galileo will work with Bay Area Travel to develop a strategy to capitalize on Cendant-affiliate RCI’s preferred agent program and enhance their existing preferred partnership with other Cendant subsidiaries.   

Kevin Puma, CEO of Bay Area Travel, said: “The key drivers behind our move to Galileo was their flexible technology platform, merchant model revenue opportunities and the added value they are able to bring to the table through Cendant-affiliates such as THOR, RCI timeshare, among many others. The deal we have signed with Galileo will both speed up and significantly enhance the range of content and services we can offer our clients.  The only difference clients will notice during the switchover is that our service gets even better.”

Bridgette Christiansen, vice president of sales and account development for The Americas, Galileo said:  “This is a significant conversion win from Amadeus and the scale of this agreement is indicative of the way in which Galileo is leveraging Cendant’s overall value proposition to deliver significant long term benefits to its customers.  Galileo is committed to helping our travel agency customers compete more effectively with tools that maximize efficiency, content that drives revenue, and marketing solutions that increase sales. We look forward to partnering closely with Bay Area Travel to help them meet their business objectives for years to come.”
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