The sophisticated itinerary app for the XL Travel Group, XLGO, is a first in the South African market and the first to deploy Trip Assist, Travelport’s new mobile technology for agencies
Travelport, a leading Travel Commerce Platform and XL Travel are delighted to announce the launch of the new app for the XL Travel Group, one of the largest and most influential travel consortia in South Africa with over 160 travel agency members across both business and leisure travel.
The new app, named XLGO, will help customers of XL Travel’s agencies across South Africa, providing advanced mobile travel capabilities such as flexible itinerary management, real-time communications, duty of care and day of travel assistance. With the XLGO app, XL Travel agencies can build stronger relationships with travelers by providing the right experience and information at the right time in the channel they use most, the mobile channel. It provides the agencies with more opportunities to connect, support and engage end-travelers at every stage of their journey, providing a seamless, trusted and personalized mobile customer experience in line with the expectations of today’s ‘always-on’ traveler.
The new mobile solution for agencies by Travelport Digital provides a personal digital travel concierge service through a powerful set of mobile tools – including smart itinerary management, day of travel assistance, push-notification reminders, real-time alerts and the ability to call an agent from within the app. This ensures continuous engagement throughout trips with more opportunities for the agencies to guide, influence and connect with their customers en route and for TMCs, it enables a more consumer-centric business travel experience.
A key element of the XLGO app is Travelport Engage, a flexible mobile messaging tool which delivers relevant and personalized travel updates during and after every trip. Other features of the new app include automatic itinerary updates and organized trip segments to easily navigate itineraries. Real-time assistance is always at hand, with the tap of a finger travelers are connected directly to a support agent. Together with the travel alerts powered by Travelport Engage, this ensures that a duty of care is upheld at all times. Traveler engagement is the main focus with later features planned to encourage user control via the ability to request flight changes, select preferred seating and the ability to synch trip information with personal calendars from within the app.
Speaking today, Marco Ciocchetti, CEO of the XL Travel Group stated: “The provision of sophisticated mobile services in travel is no longer an option, it has become a necessity. Business and leisure travelers no longer just want mobile technology to transform their travel experience, it is an expectation. With this in mind, the launch of the XLGO app is the first step in our new mobile strategy, with additional mobile features and functionality to be regularly rolled out. We have exciting plans for the future of our XLGO mobile offering to further enhance the travel journey for travelers across South Africa. Selecting Travelport for our mobile solution and roadmap will enable us to lead the way when providing innovative mobile travel services in our market that make every stage of travel more efficient, seamless and enjoyable.”
Robyn Christie, General Manager at Travelport South Africa, commented: “We are delighted to launch Trip Assist with the XL Travel Group, a prominent and influential player in the South African travel industry, serving over 160 travel agencies across the region. In an increasingly smartphone-led communications world, we are committed to improving customers’ travel experiences with sophisticated mobile solutions that exploits the expertise and experience of Travelport Digital.”