AI technology services provider Cognizant is deploying Anthropic's AI assistant Claude to modernize Travelport's technology approach, with Travelport's booking and servicing platform up first on the assignment list, the companies announced.
With the partnership, Travelport said it will speed up its ability to provide AI innovation to its clients, including travel management companies, airlines and hotels, while embedding AI features in its own platform. Cognizant will use Claude for developing and testing code and analyzing Travelport's codebases, which will cut down on the time it takes Travelport to deliver software to clients, according to the companies.
In a statement, Travelport CEO John Mangelaars called the collaboration "a genuine AI superpower" for the company.
"Anthropic brings the most capable AI models and tools," he said. "Cognizant adds engineering talent and development capability to deploy them at scale, and Travelport brings the travel infrastructure and the partner network that connects it all to the real world of distribution and bookings."
The collaboration first will focus on Travelport Trip Services, which handles bookings, exchanges, refunds and servicing, and customer-facing capabilities such as automated exchanges and disruption intelligence. The first customer-facing capabilities will be on the market later this year, according to Travelport.
Specifically, for TMCs, Travelport said it aims to have a platform that can absorb more manual work for agents and add intelligence to workflows. For example, an agent making a booking for a business travel can find the routes with the lowest disruption risk, according to Travelport.
"The travel industry runs on some of the most complex technology infrastructure in the world, and the companies that will lead it forward are the ones investing now in how that infrastructure gets built," Cognizant CEO Ravi Kumar said in a statement. "This collaboration is about giving Travelport the tools to move faster and deliver higher quality at scale to meet the challenge of a changing travel distribution landscape."