Travelport reported 4% growth in revenue to almost $2.45 billion in the year to December as it posted a net profit of $140 million for the full-year, an increase of $125 million on 2016.
Travel technology company Travelport which includes global distribution system (GDS) brands Worldspan and Galileo, reported an adjusted operating profit of $590 million for 2017, up 3% on the previous year.
It forecast net revenue growth of 4%-6% for the coming year.
Gordon Wilson, Travelport president and chief executive, said: “We achieved a strong performance in Asia and Latin America where our air share grew as we won new business.”
Wilson told Travel Weekly: “We’re quite proud of what we’ve achieved – 5% growth for the [fourth] quarter and 4% for the year. We’re winning business.”
He forecast “underlying growth in revenue of 7% to 10%” in 2018 and said: “That is a great trajectory.”
In Europe, Wilson said: “We’ve been helped by [airline] pricing. When an airline no longer does full content [with us] it means they no longer get a discounted price from us.”
IAG-owned British Airways and Iberia ended full-content agreements with Travelport and the other GDSs in October and imposed a surcharge on GDS bookings from November 1.
Wilson said: “IAG had a substantial discount. They no longer get it.”
However, he said: “The impact is marginal. We can’t discern any shift out of the GDS channel and we’ve not heard of any agency which is up and running through the NDC [New Distribution Capability] channel.”
He added: “Very few travel agencies have done an API connection on their own – because it’s not just about creating an API, it is about what you put into it.”
Wilson reported ‘Beyond Air’ revenue from rail, hotel and car hire transactions as well as from payments “grew by 11% in 2017 as we continued to benefit from investment in growing digital solutions including mobile apps, hospitality and commercial payments”.
Annual revenue from air transactions grew by 3% to $1.7 billion.
Travelport reported “a record level of new business signed and onboarded in 2017, with more to come onstream during 2018”.