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Travelport, the business services provider to the global travel industry, and already operating both the Galileo and Worldspan global distribution systems (GDS), declared the details of its new, one stop leisure portal for travel agents. Appropriately named, Travelport Leisure, the new travel trade portal is an improved edition of its former Galileo Leisure portal, first launched in 2005. The GDS provider was prompted to make additional investment in its Galileo Leisure offering due the ongoing growth potential of global leisure travel spends that is expected to be nearing $700bn mark by 2014.

The new Travelport Leisure portal has an exhaustive list of new hotels, hostels, B&BS and car options. Being launched in June 2010, the new version offers better functionality and also localized content at a country level. As in the past, the travel agents will have free access to it even without subscribing for Travelport GDS.

Jane Lewis, Vice President, Land and Sea, for Travelport, explained: “The new and improved Travelport Leisure portal not only has a great new look, but also dramatically increases agents’ earning potential through the availability of new, easily bookable leisure content. Our partners in the travel trade told us they liked using Galileo Leisure but wanted an even greater choice of content and we have responded to their feedback. This new leisure portal very much complements Travelport’s core GDS platforms and we are confident it will attract even more users from the travel trade.”

Travelport Leisure comes with the whole lot of Galileo Leisure’s present hotel content that comprises of 35,000 hotels, will also enable the  agents to access  new content from a series of well-known leaders of   leisure suppliers.

These include:

- HotelClub by Orbitz – 57,000 hotels in 5,600 cities international. A leading brand of the U.S.-based online travel company Orbitz Worldwide (NYSE: OWW), HotelClub offers discount rates and deals, and instant confirmation for travellers in the United States, Asia Pacific and all over Europe.

- Kuoni Connect – 15,000 hotels in more than 1,800 destinations with a distinctive portfolio of boutique/design, international brands and beach hotels. Coming soon to Travelport Leisure will be transfers, sightseeing, destination packages, concierge services and escorted tours.

- Hostelworld.com – Leader in the budget bed sector with more than 24,000 properties in 186 countries and over 7,000 destinations.  Properties include hostels, B&BS, apartments, guesthouses, campsites and budget hotels.

- Cars by TUI – Part of TUI Travel PLC, Cars by TUI, a major car rental aggregator has more than 130 car rental partners all over the world. It’s equipped to provide the best available rates for international suppliers such as Hertz, Avis, Europcar, and Sixt and a number of local partners.

Moreover, Travelport Leisure will continue to extend helpful services provided by GTA and that include interactive city maps and useful travel information such as weather reports, hotel reviews, news, visa requirements and destination guides to assist sales proceeds of agents.

“We are seeing some very encouraging signs that leisure travel spend has really picked up again and much of this spend will be on non-air related products such as hotels and car hire. We believe this upgraded leisure booking tool is a logical way to work with the travel trade to take advantage of this significant opportunity and make booking leisure content and earning revenues on it even easier,” added Lewis.