Opodo CEO Giovanni Bisignani said, as a leading provider of electronic global distribution services for the travel industry, Galileo’s computer reservation systems (CRS) will support Opodo in countries such as Italy where it has localised reach and strength.

“The combination of Galileo and Amadeus’ market-leading distribution systems will provide us with the strength and local framework we need to achieve our goals to be the leading European online travel service by 2004,” Mr Bisignani said.

Opodo, which will launch from the end of this year, is a joint venture between Europe’s nine leading airlines - Aer Lingus, Air France, Alitalia, Austrian Airlines, British Airways, Finnair, Iberia, KLM, Lufthansa and Amadeus. Its first site will launch in Germany, then in the UK and France early next year and later across Europe between 2002 and 2003.

“Galileo has been specifically selected to ensure our customers have access to the richest inventory available of flights and other key travel products available in these countries. We want to take full advantage of Galileo’s investment in technology, to create a market-focused reservation system to deliver the best that our customers can buy,” Mr Bisignani said. He said the announcement is yet another demonstration of Opodo teaming up with state-of-the-art technologies to build its advanced online travel service, set to change the face of global distribution in Europe. “Opodo is committed to the ongoing investment in technology platforms and to delivering a truly unrivalled service for each of the markets we enter,” he said.

Galileo Vice President Sales and Customer Marketing in Europe, Middle East and Africa Gordon Wilson said that he was delighted that Galileo had been chosen to provide distribution services for Opodo. “The agreement between Opodo and Galileo ensures that this new entrant in the online, retail travel market will have the widest possible reach within all key European markets.”

"Opodo will benefit from Galileo’s leading application programming interfaces, EDIFACT Select and XML Select™, together with the support of our European-wide organisation,” added Mr Wilson.

Galileo has offered Opodo two of its leading Applications Programming Interface (API) solutions, EDIFACT Select and XML Select™. With XML Select, Galileo customers can build an online presence and seamlessly integrate bookable travel content into a new or existing Web site. Based on XML (extensible mark-up language), XML Select helps to reduce costs and contributes to a flexible distribution strategy. The effort and specialised knowledge required for development is minimal, and at the same time, access to a range of new distribution channels, including digital TV and wireless applications, is possible. EDIFACT Select provides access to Galileo’s CRS from any popular business platform (UNIX, IBM, DEC, Data General, etc.). It also provides multi-session capability and is platform independent. As with all of Galileo’s ‘Select’ products, both XML Select and EDIFACT Select uses structured data.

Opodo's other technology suppliers include Sapient, Energis and TRX.


Further Information:

Opodo News Team
Tel: +44 (0)20 7664 7804
email: pr@opodo.com