Asked if any targets had been set for the Asia launch announced recently, spokesperson for Travelport Asia Pacific, Michael Yates, said, “We haven’t set targets for Asia or for any of the launch markets to date. Our goal was to create a platform to allow travel professionals to interact with one another and share experience and knowledge.

“The response so far has been very positive and we expect that will continue as the network grows.”

Travelport Opinions was launched in France in June 2009, UK and Ireland in March 2010, and Australia in December 2010.

At the time of writing this post, the platform has 7,638 members from 126 different countries. Yates said adoption has been predominantly from UK, France, Belgium, Switzerland, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. There are 5734 ‘professional’ reviews.

It will be interesting to see how travel agents in Asia embrace the platform. It’s largely a traditional market where brick-and-mortar agents have been slow to embrace the digital channel, and are just now waking up to what’s happening in the online travel space. 

Thus far, their immediate attention has been on distribution issues and not around social media although mobile is now getting a lot of attention among the bigger corporate travel players.

There are few industry bloggers and most online industry forums struggle to get travel agents to voice their opinions or share their comments in public for one reason or another, with most preferring to conduct their business away from the limelight, preferably on golf courses. .

Also given the huge differences in the region – market, culture, language, distribution patterns – there is no one size fits all. Huge markets like China and Japan prefer their own social networks rather than generic, global platforms.

Asked about this challenge, Yates said, “We have no reason to believe they won’t see the value in getting independent advice from other travel professionals around the world.

“For now, we are simply sending out invitations for agents to join and participate… but we may do an incentive promotion to encourage wider adoption in the coming months.”

Asked if local language editions would be launched, Yates said Travelport Opinions already supports French and English languages.

“We have started on a small scale which we will build over time; it is being launched on a country by country basis, however, due to the viral nature of the online network, is being adopted across the world (a global platform with members from 126 different countries). It is likely that other languages will be added at some point in the future, this will be driven by user-demand.”

He added, “Our purpose is universal – to help agents do their jobs better by accessing real-time trustworthy information from fellow professionals. This is very compatible with our role as a provider of business solutions to the global travel industry.”

Travelport Opinions is free to travel agents, tour operators and travel consolidators, irrespective of their GDS affiliation. Approximately one third of members are not Travelport customers, this includes non-GDS connected agencies, said Yates.

Asked if the platform can be truly neutral with the Travelport name attached to it, Yates said, “Travelport is proud of the fact that we have pioneered this network for travel agents and that’s why it carries our brand.

“It is a neutral platform because it is open to all agents regardless of whether or not they are a Travelport customer. We see ourselves as facilitating the open exchange of information and reviews between travel agents who freely choose to participate and benefit from that exchange. ”

Some website stats/site usage for 2010 on Travelport Opinions:

Every hour on Travelport Opinions:

• 2 people register
• 1 review is added
• 15 messages are shared (1 message every 4 minutes)
• 4 new Qs & As are posted!

End of year count on Opinions 
• + 7,300 members
• + 9,000 questions and answers
• + 65,000 messages exchanged

76 new features
Top 5 being:
=> Private label
=> New e-mail sending system (anti-spam with emailvision, same as linkedIn)
=> Expert locator
=> People you may know
=> Latest activities of your contacts