Galileo said it can "state unequivocally" that it has no intention of forcing any customers to migrate to a new system in the U.S. The statement was the clearest indication yet that if Travelport, Galileo's parent, succeeds in acquiring Worldspan, it does not intend to integrate the two systems. That means Travelport will operate three GDS platforms; Galileo, which was developed in Europe, was never integrated with the U.S. born-and-bred Apollo system.
Galileo said it can "state unequivocally" that it has no intention of forcing any customers to migrate to a new system in the U.S. The statement was the clearest indication yet that if Travelport, Galileo's parent, succeeds in acquiring Worldspan, it does not intend to integrate the two systems. That means Travelport will operate three GDS platforms; Galileo, which was developed in Europe, was never integrated with the U.S. born-and-bred Apollo system.
"The proposed acquisition of Worldspan is designed to ensure that our company is best positioned to meet the growing demands of all of our customers -- travel suppliers, travel agencies and end consumers -- as we work together to redefine the way travel content is distributed," Galileo said in a statement.
The company said its objective is "to harness the technology expertise from both GDSs to run the most efficient, innovative company in the industry and to offer progressive benefits to our travel agency, on-line and supplier customers." "Over the past few years, both Galileo and Worldspan have invested in more open, flexible systems and, as a result, sharing value-added technology across the two systems has become much easier," Galileo said. "Furthermore, additional investment in products and services will be made over both systems in the future which will be far more efficient and cost-effective for all concerned."
Galileo said that even if it thought forced migration was a good idea, "attempts to do this in the past by some of our competitor GDSs have shown that such a strategy would be likely to fail." That is likely a reference to Amadeus, which experienced some rocky moments 10 years ago when it acquired System One and migrated its users to the Amadeus system.
