Kulula now available on all three GDSs

Kulula has signed deals with all three GDSs making it easier for agents to book with the airline.

Yesterday eTNW announced that kulula had signed a deal with Sabre making the airline’s fare and schedule information available to Sabre travel agents worldwide, with real-time seat availability.

Following this, Amadeus announced that it too had signed with kulula. “This is a very exciting announcement as it provides travel advisers with a quick and efficient way to book one of the most popular South African airlines directly,” says Amadeus South Africa gm, Peter Long. “Equally, kulula will in the near future be able to enter into codesharing and interline agreements that unleash a whole set of benefits and advantages it previously didn’t have access to.”

“One of the really exciting benefits is that moving on to Amadeus suddenly opens up kulula content to the corporate market, which had previously been sidelined by the web interface and corporate travel booking rules,” says  Brian Kitchin, executive manager sales and distribution for kulula.

Shortly afterwards Travelport announced its agreement with kulula, cementing the airline’s place in South Africa. Brian says: “We are delighted to expand our partnership with Travelport through this full-content agreement and look forward to continue building on our existing relationship with our collective customers in the trade. Travelport is clearly committed to growing its operations in Southern Africa and also has an extensive global distribution network, making them a highly efficient partner for distributing our airfares to the travel industry.”

“This deal is good news for travel agency customers globally, who need guaranteed access to kulula’s full inventory. It’s also great that kulula.com has opted for a higher level of GDS participation, resulting in enhanced seamless functionality. It demonstrates the value they see in distributing their fares through the GDS channel and, for us, it is very much aligned to our strategy of aggregating rich travel content for our users,” concludes Will Owen Hughes, senior director airline services at Travelport.

Anna-Belle Mulder