The latest news from the GDS world, including new airline agreements, product news and initiatives.

12 March 2010:

• Shearings Holidays and Amadeus sign GDS content distribution package. The three-year agreement will give Shearings worldwide access to fares, schedules and inventories across the Amadeus system.

10 March 2010:

• Amadeus launches LinkHotel, a distribution service for small to medium size hotels and groups. LinkHotel also provides reservation tools, marketing services, and commission handling.
• Amadeus division Traveltainment acquires online marketing company Pixell. The Bonn, Germany-based company handles advertising for clients through SEO, SEM, display marketing, direct marketing and affiliate marketing as well as Twitter, social networks or mobile devices.
• Travelport unveils Opinions review system in the UK and Ireland. The service, which had a successful launch in France in mid-2009, allows agents to review hotel properties and ask questions of other experts on the system.

9 March 2010:

• Net Trans and Travelport ink deal to provide hotel commission recovery to Travelport agents around the world. The Net Trans system allows agents to see how much commission has been paid or owed by a supplier as well as managing processes between the two.

8 March 2010:

• Best Western International signs enhanced contract with GTA by Travelport to boost distribution of the chain’s property descriptions
• LOT Polish Airlines and Amadeus agree extension to technology partnership to extend to the Star Alliance Common IT platform inventory system. The new agreement will complete in in the second half of 2010 and also see an upgrade to its customer management system and use of the wider Star Alliance platform.
• Sabre reveals programme with data management firm iWay Software. The Airline Solutions division of Sabre has worked with iWay to audit and analyse the Airport Data Intelligence programme, a system which tracks capacity and other details of every flight in the world.

6 March 2010:

• Bangkok Airways and Amadeus unite for travel agency promotion. Agents booking tickets on the airline through the Amadeus GDS are also entered in a prize draw. Both organisations claim an immediate increase in bookings following the launch – the promotion runs until 31 May 2010.

5 March 2010:

• Agencia Abreu seals multi-year deal with Travelport to use the Galileo GDS system. The Portuguese travel agency, one of the largest in the country and in existence since 1840, has 120 offices around the country and also a sizeable presence in the US and Brazil.

4 March 2010:

• Amadeus signs agreement to evaluate use of the Altea Customer Management System with Asiana Airlines. The Memo of Understanding will explore for future use of the Altea system for reservation, inventory and departure control processes across the Asiana network.

Testing and QA:

User cases are key to preparation during the final phase before app submission.

Be sure to test everything on the emulator and actual device you support. There have been instances of differences between environments including response time, screen display and functionality.

The emulator lacks real time limitations like internet connection testing for 3G versus EDGE.

When we began, the general public didn’t have access to automated functional testing.

As a result, one of our developers created his own, UISpec, which is currently available as an open source component [It writes scripts around your testing keys].

Another important detail when testing these apps on the phone device, is that it has to be done from a publicly accessible server, as most corporations won’t let an iphone connect through the firewall.

Figure out early in the process for an alternate solution before developing and testing.

Remember that iPhone guidelines address specifics to iPhone and not iTouch, so take into consideration not to force capabilities to work on new OSs.

As a developer you need to think about features, so check on which device to see if you can handle, such as camera version, phone version, GPS usage, photos for the device etc.

You will learn some lessons along the way during the guideline and review process that will refine your product development, testing and product definition, and overall user experience.

Remember too that Apple’s ad hoc distribution allows for up to 100 people to “beta test” your app before you launch it publicly.

We’d recommend you take advantage of that to gain feedback and test the process.

You also receive up to 50 promo coupons for promo when it does go live on iTunes as part of the developer kit.

NB: This How To series is authored by Robyn Grassanovits, Amy Dillon, Brian Knorr, Dr Maher Ali, Shannon Mihalakos and Carmen Velazquez of TripCase – an iPhone app to handle trip and itinerary management by Sabre.

In the last round of GDS negotiations in 2007, airlines such as American Airlines and Delta Airlines stridently warned that they would pull out of major GDSs if the carriers didn’t get their way.

In 2010, American is pledging to go outside of the GDSs again, this time through Farelogix, and JetBlue, in more thoughtful tones absent the rhetoric, is pushing the message that the airline-GDS business model is broken and must change, leading up to negotiations next year.

Noreen Courtney-Wilds, JetBlue’s vice president, sales, says the industry took “baby steps” in the last round of negotiations.

After those talks, the airlines reduced the booking fees they had to pay GDSs, and the GDSs made themselves whole to a large extent by greatly reducing the incentives they pay to travel agencies.

“We all kind of know the financial model needs to change,” Courtney-Wilds said in a panel discussion, “Future of Distribution Forum,” at the TravelCom conference in Dallas yesterday afternoon.

She adds: “If it doesn’t change, folks will look for other ways to solve it.”

Courtney-Wilds notes that JetBlue recently transitioned to the SabreSonic reservations’ system and ratcheted up to full participation in the four major GDSs.

The upside is that JetBlue picked up incremental business from the GDS channel, but the downside of “opening up the floodgates” is that there was an increase in travel agencies “snatching up seats that you didn’t need help filling in the first place” at a higher distribution cost, Courtney-Wilds says.

She says JetBlue doesn’t need help selling $49 tickets and, referring to increased GDS distribution costs for sometimes low-yielding tickets, Courtney-Wilds adds, “we definitely have to address [that] going forward.”

Asked what was on her wish list as far as a new financial model, Courtney-Wilds says she doesn’t have all the answers, but that the solution should lead to a variable structure where the airline can pay for distribution in areas where the carrier wants to play — and presumably not pay in less-cost-effective areas.

One reason JetBlue opted to go full-throttle in the GDSs is that it gives the airline the opportunity to tap into the high-yielding corporate-travel business in certain markets.

Referring to a lot of noise these days about airline direct-connects bypassing GDSs, Courtney-Wilds says technical issues aren’t the basis of the conversation and all of this talk will be silenced once the airline-GDS financial model is fixed.

Fellow panel member Dan Westbrook, vice president, supplier development in the Americas for Travelport GDS, told the audience that the business model may need to be “fine-tuned,” adding that most airlines are willing to pay for high-yielding business.

He adds that Travelport GDS is talking to suppliers, looking for opportunities and trying to find the right balance.

Westbrook says the ultimate solution may vary, sector to sector.

Courtney-Wilds also had some stern, if polite, words for metasearch engines, too.

In the past, she says, JetBlue’s fares would appear in metasearch engines and consumers would link into the booking path on JetBlue.com, the airline’s cheapest distribution channel.

However, today JetBlue’s inventory is displayed in metasearch along with several other booking choices in the same results box and there are greater distribution costs for the carrier if consumers book through online travel agencies instead of going to JetBlue.com.

“The economics of the channel have changed and we are looking at that,” Courtney-Wilds says.

Olaf Gueldner, manager director and president of Travelport in Europe, answers three key questions about the business and the wider GDS sector.

Travelport’s announcement that it is bringing all of its GDS advertising business in-house — and it is the first major GDS to do so — is a fairly momentous development because it breaks TravelClick’s near monopoly on green-screen advertising.

Until Travelport’s announcement, TravelClick handled virtually all the advertising sales and ad-serving for Travelport GDS [Galileo, Apollo and Worldspan], Amadeus and Sabre.

The adds typically are messages from hotels about promotions and specials, and they appear on travel agent’s green screens.

With Travelport’s decisions to have its own sales teams exclusively handle this advertising and to use an ad-serving platform of its own choosing, TravelClick is losing a very substantial percentage of global green-screen real estate.

TravelClick is heavily into handling advertising for hotels and GDSs so Travelport’s initiative is by no means a knockout punch for TravelClick, but assuredly it hurts.

For Travelport, which is slated to launch its Universal Desktop in the U.S. later this year, the move means it can earn higher margins in its advertising programs by eliminating a middleman.

The advertising business is a high-margin affair, and many travel e-commerce players are seeking to get the most out of it.

Travelport’s execution of the strategy will answer the question of whether TravelClick or Travelport’s own sales squads can handle the business more efficiently.

The other major GDSs — Sabre and Amadeus — assuredly are monitoring Travelport’s initiative.

Orbitz Worldwide added travel industry veteran Brad Gerstner to its board of directors, and Gerstner says he took the post to support CEO Barney Harford’s mission to transform Orbitz into “a global hotel powerhouse.”

Gerstner made his bones in the travel industry as co-CEO of cruise powerhouse National Leisure Group, and he served at General Catalyst Partners, was vice president of PAR Capital Management and is founder and CEO of Altimeter Capital Management.

Orbitz also gave a board seat to Martin Brand, managing director of the Blackstone Group’s private equity group. Brand also serves on the board of Travelport. Blackstone is the leader of the private-equity trio, which owns Travelport and controls Orbitz Worldwide.

The recruitment of the two new board members follows by two months Orbitz equity transactions with Travelport and PAR Investment Partners, which has Travelport’s parent company, including Blackstone, controlling about 56% of Orbitz stock and PAR picking up about one-fourth of Orbitz’s outstanding shares.

While U.S.-based online-travel insiders will tell you that adding Gerstner to the Orbitz board is a great move, the backdrop to the appointment of Gerstner and Brand points to the dynamics of the relationship between Orbitz and Travelport, a coupling that has Travelport calling more of the shots than is the norm for major stockholders.

In its new 10-K, Orbitz states: “Our certificate of incorporation provides Travelport with a greater degree of control and influence in the operation of our business and the management of our affairs than is typically available to a stockholder of a publicly traded company.”

In fact, Travelport has final say about who sits on the Orbitz board and imposes tight restrictions on Orbitz’s GDS and airline relationships, among other areas. Travelport even controls the formation of Orbitz board committees.

Gerstner, who formerly was PAR’s vice president, apparently was PAR’s pick for the board, and Brand was Travelport’s selection. Ultimately, Travelport’s owners have veto power over any board slot.

Along the same lines, when Orbitz Worldwide completed its IPO in 2007, it entered into GDS agreements with Travelport that led to Orbitz paying Travelport nominal segment-shortfall penalties in 2008 and 2009 because OWW’s ebookers’ unit didn’t process enough segments through Galileo and Worldspan, according to the 10-K.

The Orbitz-Travelport GDS agreement mandates that ebookers use Travelport GDS — i.e. Galileo and Worldspan — exclusively in some European countries, and transmitting bookings through other GDSs leaves Orbitz subject to $1.25-per segment shortfall fees.

Orbitz didn’t meet its quota, which led to it paying ebookers’ shortfall penalties to Travelport over the last two years.

Orbitz, which uses Galileo, Worldspan and Amadeus for GDS services, historically has not had to pay shortfall penalties to Travelport for segments originating in Orbitz’s domestic U.S. brands.

If Orbitz has to pay segment penalties to Travelport from time to time, Orbitz also is dependent on Travelport for a chunk of Orbitz revenue.

In 2009, according to the 10-K, Orbitz received $112 million in incentive payments from Travelport for bookings processed through Worldspan and Galileo, and those incentive payments accounted for about 10% of OWW’s overall revenue.

“Because our GDS service agreement with Travelport limits our ability to modify our existing agreements with the airlines or to enter into new, direct distribution arrangements, we may have limited flexibility to respond to developments in the airline industry, and we may be forced to forgo new partnering opportunities,” Orbitz states. “The limitations imposed by the GDS service agreement may place us at a competitive disadvantage and could negatively impact our business and results of operations.”

Thus, although OWW is a publicly traded company, its fate is controlled to a great extent by Travelport.

Amadeus, Travelport and Sabre have briefly tossed their differences aside to come together to back the launch of a fundraising programme to help support global health projects.

The trio have joined a number of other travel firms to back MassiveGood, a project which allows US travellers to donate $2 every time they book a air ticket, buy a hotel room or rent a car on the web.

MassiveGood is led by former US president Bill Clinton, United Nations’ secretary-general Ban Ki-moon and a string of musicians, actors and other politicians, including UK prime minister Gordon Brown, to raise money for projects to fight HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.

A film to support the launch, featuring Samuel L Jackson, Susan Sarandon and directed by Spike Lee, was unveiled today at the UN in New York.

Available in the US from today, MassiveGood will extend to European travel sites during 2010.

The system works by having a dedicated button within the booking path to allow users to make their $2 pledge.

Sam Gilliland, chief executive and chairman of Sabre Holdings:

“This is one of those unique opportunities where you unite as a travel industry to help tackle the challenges faced by those in developing countries. With more than 40% of the world’s travel agencies using Sabre, we feel confident that we can make a positive contribution to MassiveGood, and encourage travelers to support this when launched.

Jeff Clarke, chief executive of Travelport:

“As a GDS partner in this ambitious project, Travelport has the opportunity to use our global reach and a distribution system that touches millions of travelers each year to meet an urgent humanitarian need.”

Other backers include Accor and Travelocity.

Two almost simultaneous bits of news emerging today showing how traditional travel technology firms have turned to disciplines in media to establish new revenue streams.

At one end of the scale, GDS giant Travelport has announced it has created a global division to handle online display advertising for its airline, hotel and car hire customers on third party platforms in travel agencies.

The other end sees Avvio establish an affiliate marketing system of its own to run advertising campaigns on publisher sites identified as strong lead-gen contenders for small or independent hotels.

Travelport says ahead of its plan to roll out its Universal Desktop system to all customers later this year it is moving from “primarily a distribution vehicle to a strategic sales and marketing platform” for product suppliers.

Central to the Travelport move is allowing suppliers to build display advertising which showcases its additional product range through ancillaries, such as the upsell of baggage and seat positioning for airlines.

Travelport says the new department will have dedicated advertising account managers as well as a technology support team.

Officials say the company evaluated a number of third party media providers to do the same job but decided to build the system itself.

Avvio, which has created booking engines for hoteliers for around eight years, has built a model where hotel clients can hand over creative advertising duties to the firm and make use of the company’s relationships with publishing platforms not normally connected to a wider affiliate network.

Yannis Anastasakis, head of business development at Avvio, says smaller, independent hoteliers have traditionally shied away from working with affiliate networks as many are reluctant to hand over credit card details for a monthly subscription to a system that may not yield results.

The Avvio platform works by only charging the hotel a fee when a booking is made as a result of a click-through on their ad on the network.

The move by Travelport and Avvio is the latest in a line of decisions by technology firms to alter their traditional model to establish different forms of distribution for clients.

In IT circles there is much talk of the so-called fourth wave or Smart Computing.

In the same way that the web changed our access to data and information – we now have to think that Smart Computing will have a similar impact on our computing environments and applications.

In a recent piece for Forrester’s IT customers, analyst Mike Gilpin discusses the need for applications to match the technology – and nowhere is this more relevant than in travel.

The reason is that if you stand back and think about all the dynamic data needed to make a decision the plethora of sources and forms makes a perfect answer impossible.

However the current dilemma of either brute force search and discard vs caching is dealing in old paradigms of thought. We need to change the how we think about search.

Already we are beginning to see some commercialization of this new thinking. Bing (amongst others) are thinking more and more how to apply Smart Computing to the search process.

While still in its infancy this new thinking will ultimately pay off in a better customer experience and a change in the order of travel industry IT.

I cannot imagine anyone thinks that caching is a good idea and a permanent solution to search. And clearly brute force hits are too expensive.

So both Amadeus and Galileo (with its purported “Super Cache”) are pursuing a continuation of a commercial model that keeps them in the center of the universe but with the costs rising both above the line (GDS fees) and below the line (technology and search hits).

Not a good idea and not sustainable. The cost of travel provision will keep on rising if we allow this to continue.

We need to find a better way to address how search is delivered. This is not a big bang type of development but a number of different moving parts have to be put in place. And it is not all technology.

The current transaction based with extra top-ups has to change. But don’t hold your breath.

The strangle grip that the GDS players have on both the neutral distribution and the airline IT side of life makes it hard to effect change.

But I know that search is not a simple thing and that some big players are really getting excited about it. Perhaps someone slaving away in a garage will find something.

Or how about the true Troogle will emerge from Google Labs as a new technology for airline price/availability search and it will blow us all away.

Two recent studies point to the emergence of the newly chastened traveler. So what are we – victims or champions?

Forrester’s Henry Harteveldt outlines such concerns in one about the fate of eBusiness and in other concerning optimism amongst travelers.

Harteveldt notes: “The travel industry is coming out of 2009 like a war-battled soldier — exhausted and aching” – his point being that the industry as a whole needs to take on the challenge to support the now battered and bruised traveller.

So far I see little to nothing I would have thought would be a tilt in the direction of addressing what can be done to stimulate traffic. So why is this?

My sense is that the different parts of the distribution and sales process have truly fragmented and have not yet figured out how to be individual champions for their own part of a new pie type.

Further it shows that the days of the travel agency as a passive purveyor of the airlines’ product line is truly dead.

Those who operated thus are now officially roadkill and I doubt there are any left. The airlines, too, are not able to move the needle on the direct vs indirect split.

So perhaps now is the time to finally declare a truce in that war and focus on a modus vivendi in this new world.

Indeed, I believe we are at a new point in the evolution of the travel distribution model.

For sure there are new players who have some influence on the traveler – for example, metasearch (such as Kayak) and social media portals (such as Facebook in general and TripAdvisor in particular).

We are also at the point where the breadth of services that can be provided to the customer – both corporate and leisure – is greater.

The ability of the various players in the channel to be aggregators has risen.

Thus dynamic packaging can be initiated as much by a supplier as it can by an intermediary seller.

If you do not believe me, how else do you interpret this Delta scheme for cruise partners – similarly the ability of an intermediary to create new products has risen.

Acknowledging this new world order should give rise to all players taking a fresh look at how they promote and indeed to my core point WHAT they promote to their user communities to stimulate traffic. This is everyone’s responsibility, not just those traditional supply side players to initiate.

So chaps – time to dust off Marketing 101.

Time to re-assess how you market and sell. Time to provide real discernable value.

Failure to do this will hurt us all. We are at the pivotal point that will determine whether 2010 is a great year or “another year we survived”.

Travelport GDS, which operates the Apollo/Galileo and Worldspan global distribution systems, became the first GDS to complete a U.S. Dept. of Commerce self-certification process related to privacy practices when transferring data from Europe to the U.S.

The Safe Harbor program is designed to bridge the differences between EU and U.S. data-privacy laws and requires participating companies to certify that they meet certain data-privacy principles when transmitting customer information from the Continent to the U.S. The types of data that fall under its framework include passengers’ personal details and their travel arrangements, both of which are housed in Passenger Name Records (PNRs).

Travelport’s headline on its press release about the issue, “Travelport is First GDS Provider to be Safe Harbor Certified,” may be true, but can easily be misconstrued because Safe Harbor is a self-certification process.

Privacy expert Edward Hasbrouck, who has written extensively about the issue, notes that what Travelport’s Safe Harbor designation “means is that Travelport has made a formal claim … that Travelport complies with certain Safe Harbor principles. That claim has not been vetted, audited or verified by anyone.”

As part of the process, Safe Harbor-certified companies must establish a recourse mechanism in the event that there is a pattern of noncompliance on policy issues.

Travelport GDS spokeswoman Jill Brenner says Travelport already was meeting some Safe Harbor requirements — such as using reasonable precautions to protect data security — prior to the Safe Harbor certification, and she notes that “we have not said anywhere that the EU certified us for this.”

To go through the Safe Harbor process, Travelport had to establish establish “contractual safeguards with developers and other third parties to ensure personal data are adequately protected,” Brenner says.

And, the company took several other actions, including:

• Changing its privacy policy;

• Requiring third parties with access to GDS data to include a Safe Harbor addendum in contracts;

• Implementing Safe Harbor guidelines for managers and training for employees.

Asked if going through the Safe Harbor process had anything to do with Travelport’s now-withdrawn IPO in London, Brenner says, “This certification had nothing to do with getting ready for the IPO. It is a measure of the importance we give to the issue of privacy.”

Hasbrouck wonders about the lack of an IPO tie.

“None of the GDS companies comply with EU data protection law, or have made any effort even to pay lip service to it until now,” Hasbrouck says.  “It could be that, because this is a normal part of the paperwork for a European company, the absence of any mention of data protection compliance was noted by European investment bankers, analysts, or potential investors. Travelport’s move to self-certify as compliant with Safe Harbor principles may be a response to questions raised during due diligence in the City.”

Tad Ostrowski, the Travelport GDS general counsel, says Travelport went through the optional Safe Harbor process to punctuate its commitment to data privacy and to give confidence in that regard to its customers.

Hasbrouck, a consultant to the Identity Project, says a prime function of self-certification would be to provide safeguards for Travelport GDS suppliers and travel agencies.

“An agency or airline that subscribes to Travelport might be able to argue, in mitigation of damages or fines, that it relied in good faith on Travelport’s self-certification, and therefore believed that it was legal to subscribe to Travelport and legal to store its customer data on Travelport servers in the U.S.,”  Hasbrouck says.

While Travelport GDS  is alone among GDS vendors to have a Safe Harbor certification, numerous other travel companies have certifications. Here is a sampling: StarCite, Hertz, Disney, Topaz International, Travel Technology Group, TravelCLICK, Travizon, TripIt, TRX, World Access and Radius.

Meanwhile, Sabre says it doesn’t “have any plans to pursue this certification.”

“Data privacy is very important to us and we believe the systems and processes we have in place are very robust around this,” says Sabre spokeswoman Nancy St. Pierre.

What do financial institutions and European regulators have in common? Both appear to be key groups of people impacting on the lives of anyone in the GDS community.

Financial institutions are being blamed in part for the temporary collapse of Travelport’s much lauded road to an IPO, having reacted less than favourably during the investor roadshows in recent weeks.

But it is actually the airline alliances that could actually prove to be the bigger threat to the likes of Travelport, Amadeus and Sabre than the suits of London’s Square Mile, New York’s Wall Street or Madrid.

Little known to the outside world, but quietly over the past 12 months the European Union has started to acknowledge that may possibly be a threat to competition and negotiating power of airlines when it comes to the GDSs.

There is growing speculation – evident among some of the higher profile figures at this week’s Travel Technology Europe event in London – that both the OneWorld and Star collectives are now under intensive scrutiny, as the original remit widens.

Until now it has was only a number of the airlines within the groups that attracted the attention of the European regulators – officially, when the original investigation launched in April 2009, it concerned “certain members”: British Airways, American Airlines and Iberia for OneWorld and United, Continental, Air Canada and Lufthansa for Star.

The investigation initially promised to examine pricing, revenue management and scheduling on transatlantic routes, similar to efforts by the Department of Transportation in the US.

An EU official confirms only what is in the publicly available documents and the commission’s stated objectives.

It is becoming increasingly well known in GDS circles and the lobbying community in Brussels that a significant part of the investigation will focus on how the alliances as a group – rather than as individual airlines – may attempt to squeeze the GDSs at the negotiating table when distribution contracts come up for renewal.

There is growing concern that the alliances will attempt to take over the contracting on behalf of all airlines in their portfolios if anti-trust immunity is passed.

Unsurprisingly, GDSs are worried that their always delicately balanced bargaining hand with an individual airline will be diluted if negotiations are carried out an alliance level.

The European Technology and Travel Services Association, which has online travel agencies and all the GDSs as members, says it is watching the situation closely and will assist with the investigation if called on.

EU officials will not give any indication as to the expected time of the next update from the investigating panel.

Travelport is obviously celebrating what it calls “a huge win” after securing exclusive rights to connect Thomas Cook to airline data via the Galileo GDS.

Not mentioned in the announcement – Thomas Cook/Travelport eager to keep some sense of harmony, no doubt – is that the deal also sees the end of a relationship between the company and Amadeus.

Until today, Thomas Cook agents in the UK have used both Galileo and Amadeus for air data – a classic multi-GDS approach which will be phased out in the coming weeks and months as a result of the deal.

Thomas Cook will not comment when asked why it has decided to throw its lot – including tour operating brand Gold Medal Travel and Netflights – in with one GDS supplier.

Travelport says the partnership may extend outside of the UK if discussions prove successful.

Although the deal looks to be very straightforward, albeit a large one to have pitched and negotiated, perhaps the move signifies a wider rethinking by large retailers (off and online) about their GDS provision?

“Perhaps Thomas Cook’s decision was a commercial one,” a source familiar with the deal says.

The argument for having a multi-GDS strategy used to rest on as providing as much data (fares, availability) as possible across a range of airlines in order to satisfy the search queries of the end-user.

But if each GDS has the same airline agreements (in terms of content) as its competitor then the existing strategy may well be seen in different light – or, in other words, pointless.

Tom Klein – heir apparent? Sabre Holdings announced today that Klein, who had been executive vice president of Sabre’s GDS and airlines solutions businesses, was appointed president of the company.

In the history of Sabre Holdings, it has never had a presidential slot, the company says, and created the position for Klein’s role.

With Sabre – and Amadeus, too – reportedly mulling initial public offerings, Sabre competitor Travelport, raised eyebrows in November when it likewise created a new position, deputy CEO, and tapped Gordon Wilson to fill the slot.

Earlier this week, Travelport revealed plans for its much-anticipated IPO and Tnooz reports that Wilson “is the annointed successor to US-based Jeff Clarke.”

Klein’s appointment to the Sabre presidency might be seen as a similar let’s-get-all-our-ducks-in-a-row maneuver if Sabre indeed is preparing for an IPO, with the assumption that chairman and CEO Sam Gilliland, like Clarke at Travelport, would make his getaway after a transition period.

For the record, Sabre says the appointment of Klein, 47, means he will take on broader responsibilities across the entire Sabre portfolio — officially, he already had his hands in almost everything but Travelocity — and Gilliland states: “The creation of this new role underscores the confidence we have in his leadership to drive future growth for our business.”

Meanwhile, as reported, the statement by Travelport deputy CEO Wilson that he “personally hopes that we [Travelport, Amadeus and Sabre] all are on the public markets in the future” has echoes of Southwest chairman and CEO Gary Kelly calling on competitors to increase bag fees.

Southwest would benefit if Delta ups its bag fees again, and a public Travelport might see an advantage if Sabre and Amadeus, too, have to shed their veils and battle it out openly in the public markets.

Sabre, incidentally, says an IPO is not on the agenda.

“This [appointment] is not tied to any kind of move to take the company public. We are not considering or actively pursuing going public at this time,” an official says.

Meanwhile, PhoCusWright’s financial expert Jake Fuller has run some numbers on Travelport’s projected IPO and published an analysis, which may give some pause to potential investors.

Fuller says:

“Travelport IPO plans appear to put a total value on the business of $5.4B to $6.1B versus the $5.7B spent to buy it and Worldspan.

“With cash flow down over the last three years, the implied multiple is much higher than what Blackstone initially paid for Travelport and Worldspan. That makes sense as we should see a cyclical rebound in cash flow, but may be tough to achieve given the uncertainties raised by the impending 2011 airline contract renewals.”

Travelport’s IPO likely will be history by the time the 2011 airline-contract negotiations get under way in earnest, but the would-be public company must convince investors that the outcome will not disrupt the business even though several major airlines already have signalled aggressive intentions.

Two of the burning questions for Travelport ahead of its planned listing on the London Stock Exchange have already been answered – its ongoing strategy for investment in Orbitz and succession planning for its CEO.

The travel technology and Global Distribution System provider is hoping to complete the listing in London within four to six weeks, subject to the investor roadshows planned for later this month and during February running smoothly.

Although there is a 360-day lockdown of senior management and directors on completion of the offering, Tnooz can reveal deputy chief executive Gordon Wilson is most likely to take over once current president and CEO Jeff Clarke steps down.

Speaking to Tnooz today, deputy chief executive and UK-based Gordon Wilson stresses that there are no plans for any changes at the top of the business but as deputy he is the “anointed” successor to US-based Clarke.

This confirms speculation first mooted in November when he was appointed deputy CEO.

Another important development to reveal concerns the company’s existing stake 48% stake in online travel agency giant Orbitz Worldwide, owner of Ebookers, Cheaptickets, Hotel Club and the main US Orbitz business.

Travelport retained the commanding share in the business after the Orbitz spin-off through its own IPO to the New York Stock Exchange in July 2007.

Wilson says Travelport has no plans to sell the Orbitz shares and the business remains an important one both strategically and commercially.

“We are committed to the ongoing success of Orbitz,” he stresses.

When asked about the principle reasons for the listing, Wilson gives a number of reasons:

• “De-lever” the company away from the debt associated with its existing private equity ownership through Blackstone, Technology Crossover Ventures and One Equity Partners.
• Potential to massively raise the profile of the company in the financial markets around the world (indeed, the IPO will be the biggest tech listing in London since 2007).

Meanwhile, Wilson says it was not strategically important for Travelport to be the first of the GDSs out of the block with its IPO.

The next travel tech company expected to list is Amadeus in Madrid, many believe scheduled for Q2 2010.

In fact, he wants Sabre and Amadeus to eventually join Travelport and throw their doors open to new investors (although some suspect might he would think otherwise if both companies also listed in London).

“I personally hope that we all are on the public markets in the future,” he says.