Leading travel commerce platform, Travelport, has acquired Galileo Japan, its third party distributor in the country.
Galileo Japan was previously owned by a consortium of airline owners.
With the acquisition Travelport will build a new, consolidated Travelport Japan entity that will continue to offer its customer a choice of the Apollo or Worldspan platforms.
Gordon Wilson: Acquisition in line with Travelport’s goals to expand across Asia. (Image credit: Travelport)
Travelport said in a statement that all former Galileo Japan employees, including managing director Yoshinobu Aoyama, will move to the new organisation that will be headquartered in Tokyo and supported by two satellite offices in Nagoya and Osaka.
“This is a tuck in acquisition of a business we know well and have worked with for three decades. The decision to transform from a distribution franchise to a wholly owned operation is commensurate with our goals to further expand our successful business across Asia, “ said Gordon Wilson, president and CEO for Travelport.
He added that Travelport now processes “nearly half of all international air bookings made by Japanese travel agencies and lead the market.”
Japan is the world’s third largest air travel market in terms of flights offered, after the US and China, due to its large volume of domestic air travel bookings and international connectivity provided to Japanese businesses and tourists.
