Key Tourism Figures 2016: Leonidas Zotos, General Manager for Greece Travelport

Official Tourism Message

WTM and Philoxenia are wonderful opportunities to meditate on our industry. Today’s world is an unpredictable and unsafe place as never before – and it is affecting our business. Nevertheless, Travel & Tourism still is a great and strong industry: it generated US$7.2 trillion (9.8% of global GDP) and 284 million jobs (1 in 11 jobs) to the global economy in 2015. Its growth of 3.1% was faster than the wider economy. Despite challenges, sector is forecast to continue outperforming global GDP growth in 2016. Travel & Tourism forecasts over the next ten years also look extremely favorable with predicted growth rates of 4% annually. And Europe remains the largest source region, generating half of the worlds internationals arrivals.

Travelport’s mission, as a Travel Commerce Platform provider, is creating synergies and network effects that facilitate revenue growth across the whole travel value chain.

That’s why we have transitioned from a traditional GDS to a Travel Commerce Platform that is redefining travel commerce for our customers and, since 2012, we have strategically invested approximately $830 million in products with a focus on redefining our Travel Commerce Platform to address the trends, inefficiencies and unmet needs of all components of the travel value chain.

We have transformed the traditional GDS concept, which had very limited ancillary sales capabilities, into an open platform with XML connectivity and a graphically rich, single user interface. We have connected independent hotels, previously unable to reach corporate customers, to a global network of travel agencies through our meta-search technology. We have pioneered a secure, cost-effective and automated B2B payment alternative to the traditional inefficient and costly methods for travel agencies to pay travel providers. We have acquired, what we believe to be, the largest and most successful company focused on delivering sophisticated mobile services and apps to the travel industry, MTT.

We are proud to be global travel industry’s partner.