Travelport and MICE agree strategic partnership

Corporate offering to be available through Travelport Marketplace

GDS and travel technology supplier Travelport, has struck a new strategic partnership with meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions global distribution system MICE access.

The agreement will see Travelport integrate the German tech company’s white label technologies within its own e-commerce platform, Travelport Marketplace.

The partnership will offer 65,000 travel agencies worldwide access to booking technology that is capable of serving the international MICE business with personalised content and booking functionality.

Travelport customers will be able to book hotel customers onto events online. Groups planning to attend conferences can also be booked and registered online, while travel agency customers will receive their own personal access to the portal to ensure they can make round-the-clock bookings autonomously.

Dieter Rumpel, managing director Germany, Austria and Switzerland at Travelport, said:

“The links between the hospitality and MICE industries are clear and, with the latter set to grow by 8% by 2020, we see a tremendous opportunity to offer our travel agency customers the ability to tap into this key growth sector by combining our global distribution technologies with the highly specialized GDS developed by MICE access.”

Based in Hamburg Airport, MICE access is connected to the top 25,000 conference hotel groups globally including Accor, Marriott, Best Western and Radisson Hotel Group.

The company has plans to increase its own portfolio of conference hotels to a six-digit number by 2020, which would make it one of the leading distribution platforms for the international MICE business.

Sven Bergerhausen, MICE access chief executive, said: “We are very pleased to be working with a global player like Travelport. Through our cooperation we can now grant many travel agents worldwide easy access to the lucrative multi-billion-dollar MICE business, which is just waiting to be conquered.”

Travelport and MICE access will develop a dedicated app that will be featured on Travelport Marketplace. This will be followed by a series of marketing activities aimed at raising the profile of the new technology.