Travelport's New Tech Chief Aims to Modernize How Agencies Book Trips

Skift

11-07-2025

Andrew Jordan arrived at Travelport six months ago with a mission to reduce the frustrations travel management companies have with the software their agents use.
The new chief product and technology officer has worked previously at Carlson Wagonlit Travel, where he led technology transformation at the $27 billion travel management company.
That experience, he said, taught him what agencies actually need from the global distribution systems like Travelport, which they use to book trips for road warriors.
"The number of conversations I will have with customers where I start to talk their language and they go, 'Finally, finally, somebody on the GDS [global distribution system] side now understands us,'" Jordan said in his first media interview since joining the company. "I've lived their life."
Shifting Expectations
Relations with travel agencies matter because Travelport faces competition, having recently lost accounts with BCD Travel, World Travel, and Gary Dawes Travel.
Jordan acknowledged those losses but noted that customer turnover is normal in business. This year, Travelport won business with Costco Travel and RateHawk, and it expanded its partnership with Chase Travel Group.
"I feel very confident about the support of customers that we've got," he said, adding that he's "very confident" about the company's pipeline of customers.
Travelport operates one of four major global distribution systems that airlines, hotels, and car rental companies use to distribute inventory to travel agencies. The others are Amadeus, Sabre, and TravelSky.
Thinking Like a Travel Agent
Jordan used the phrase "think like a travel agent" repeatedly to emphasize that Travelport's key strategy for success must be to become "agency specialists."
He argued that distribution systems have historically failed to recognize agent diversity "to the depth and the detail that is now possible to achieve."
The executive said he recognized that travel agents "come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, with different requirements and different needs."
He said his experience at Carlson Wagonlit taught him how travel agents think about efficiency and workflows, knowledge he said gives him an edge in helping Travelport design relevant tools.
The company will tailor tools to different agent communities rather than forcing uniform changes.
AI as Potential Disruptor
The corporate travel sector hasn't fully grasped how generative artificial intelligence will change customer expectations and require adjustments to their business workflows.
Jordan warned that AI-powered travel agents could eventually fire off "100,000 transactions a second" through distribution systems, compared with thousands per second today.
"I don't think anybody in this entire industry is ready for that," he said.
Jordan believes the industry needs to prepare for the possibility of adding AI-powered interfaces, broadly similar to Microsoft's CoPilot, to agency desktops.
"Concepts like conversational commerce and agentic AI haven't yet found their way into the travel industry at scale," Jordan said. "But that's the direction the world is going in."
Current AI applications in corporate travel typically handle booking automation, expense processing, and customer service chat tools.
However, most implementations remain siloed or limited to point solutions overlaid on older systems. They're not comprehensive platforms with AI baked in.
Anticipating Change
Jordan sees comprehensive AI platforms as inevitable, comparing the potential disruption to how fintech companies like Monzo and Revolut captured market share from traditional banks by offering greater speed and convenience.
"Where the hockey puck is going, technologically speaking, is something that's going to feel a little bit more uncomfortable for the travel industry," Jordan said.
Jordan predicted AI will transform travel booking workflows, particularly through better trip disruption management and what he called "personalized" recommendations.
Travelport last year launched an AI-powered search tool, which helps agents sort through booking options from multiple sources, including legacy airlines and newer budget carriers.
Jordan, who has also had senior tech leadership roles at NEP Group, NBC Universal, and Thomson Reuters, sees the full-platform approach as inevitable over time.
Rather than forcing a one-size-fits-all approach, Jordan wants to tailor workflows and AI-powered tools to match how different agent communities actually work.
Financial Firepower
Travelport received $770 million in private equity investment and financing in 2023 and 2024, giving it the financial flexibility to invest in technology improvements while keeping debt relatively low.
"We are in a very, very strong financial position," Jordan said about the privately held company, which doesn't disclose financial details.
Ever since 2019, when Travelport was taken private in a $4.4 billion deal by affiliates of New York activist investor Elliott Management and Siris Capital Group, the company has been reimagining its technology.
The company spent recent years consolidating three separate booking platforms and integrating its 2023 acquisition of corporate travel software maker Deem.
Jordan said that foundational work created "a steady, stable ship on which to build."
Different Customers, Different Needs
Many travel agents still book flights using decades-old command-line interfaces that require typing cryptic codes into proverbial "green screens." Jordan wants to modernize those workflows without alienating agents who prefer the speed of familiar systems.
"There is an absolute reality that there is a huge disparity between very progressive thinking customers and customers that are quite conservative," he said.
All global distribution systems have been trying to get travel agents to use consumer-style interfaces for over a decade. Still, many agents keep using their cryptic commands because they see them as faster and more efficient, thanks partly to practice and muscle memory.
Yet some agencies are evolving. One Travelport customer recently reduced 300 automated booking scripts to nine after evaluating their business value, Jordan said.
Travelport continues to provide agencies a choice of modern graphical user interfaces and traditional command-line systems. Jordan said Travelport will work with customers to develop new capabilities rather than imposing changes.
Jordan declined to provide specifics about upcoming products but said new offerings are in the works to target travel agents' top needs.
But he said his goal is to make Travelport become known as the premier agency specialist among all its peer companies.
"We're the only ones that act as a pure-play agent provider," he said.
He noted that the company is the only one of its peers focused purely on serving travel agents rather than building hotel service suites or airline passenger service systems.
"We don't dilute the whole proposition," he said. "That gives us a strength as we focus on the needs of those in agent communities and actually meet them where the technological hockey puck is going."
Subscribers to Skift Research can read the April report, Navigating the Future: What's Next for Global Distribution Systems?