ON-LINE travel giant Travelocity will upgrade its UK site with new content and features following its tie-up with US-based rival Preview Travel.
The forthcoming improvements to the site, which are due to be introduced in June, have not yet been revealed in detail.
However, Travelocity claims that its existing advantages are its Sabre reservations system, customer service and brand recognition, while Preview will bring to the table its user-friendly content and extensive holiday planning and booking features.
Vice-president for Europe Jeff Lavender said: “What it means for the UK is further innovation leading to better content, better design and new ways of shopping.”
He said Travelocity was also planning to transfer its Internet services onto interactive TV and mobile phones in the UK.
The firm has already signed a deal with Vodaphone and is close to an agreement with BT to provide travel content to a new generation of mobile phones with Internet access.
The deal between Travelocity and Preview makes Travelocity.com – the new name of the merged company – the largest on-line travel business in the world. It is also the third largest e-commerce site in the world, after book and video retailer amazon.com and auction company eBay.
Together, Travelocity and Preview have more than 17m subscribers and reported combined gross sales of $1.2bn last year. The enlarged company is valued at around $2.2bn.
In the near future, Travelocity.com plans to build on strategic alliances with other Internet and media companies, including Yahoo! and Lycos.
A five-year agreement with AOL will begin next month. Under the deal, Travelocity will be the exclusive reservations engine for all travel offered by AOL-owned companies.