Southwest Airlines will be fully live in both the Apollo and Worldspan global distribution systems on May 4, Southwest Business VP Dave Harvey said.
On that date, agents and corporate travel buyers using those GDSs will be able to shop and service bookings, and Southwest will be "treated the same as any other U.S. carrier in our system," according to Jason Toothman, head of agency sales for the Americas and global accounts for Travelport, which operates the two GDSs.
Nearly all Southwest content available in direct channels will be available through the GDSs, including such ancillaries as EarlyBird Check-In. There will be "very modest carveouts," Harvey said, but that will mostly be leisure-oriented promotional fares, and all content relevant to business travel will be available. Southwest also partnered with Airlines Reporting Corp. to implement processes for reporting and settling tickets for bookings in those channels, so agents and corporates using the channel will "have the ability, soup to nuts, to service their accounts, manipulate and manage tickets and every step of the process without having to call a call center," Harvey said.
The activation date is within the timeline given by Southwest last year, when it first announced its new GDS strategy.
Over the next few weeks, Travelport will be communicating with TMC partners to make sure they are ready to manage Southwest within the channels, Toothman said. While many TMCs currently are operating at lower staffing levels due to the Covid-19 crisis, the ones they have spoken to so far are ready, he said.
"The thing on this deal, the marketplace is ready for some good news," Toothman said. "While we're facing these challenging times, we're also preparing for a bright future."
Harvey said the activation "comes at the perfect timing for that rebound. Buyers and TMCs have asked for this for the better part of a decade, and this will make it easier for them to get back to business and hit the ground running."
Southwest does not yet have dates for when its content will be live in Travelport's Galileo GDS or in Amadeus, with whom it announced an agreement at the same time as with Travelport. Southwest projects that will happen in the fall or by the end of this year, Harvey said.
Southwest also had been in talks with Sabre for enhanced GDS participation but earlier this year decided to keep that relationship unchanged.