Travel Republic Outsource New IT Department To Aid Growth

By Alex Viall, Mustard IT

This week, popular travel agency Travel Republic has cemented its position at the top of the market with a major infrastructure development. According to travel news website Travolution, it has just put the finishing touches to a large scale integration with channel management company eRevMax. The venture comes hot on the heels of a busy twelve months for the company.

In 2014, it made the decision to outsource its IT department in a bid to encourage faster growth and expansion. The owner of Travel Republic, DNATA, has not only rapidly increased the size of its IT development resources, it even went as far as to launch a new branch in India. If these changes were not enough, it was also revealed that its single remaining founder, Paul Furner, would be leaving the company.

A Rash of Departures

According to the experts at Travel Mole, the chief executive was followed by commercial manager Chris Roche, who left in summer, a mere twenty four months after it was bought by DNATA. This rash of departures has unsurprisingly led to rumours about whether or not the executives were happy to be taken over by the Emirates owned travel and logistics enterprise.

These whisperings were given further credence after the DNATA vice president, Iain Andrew, released a statement confirming that the next generation of Travel Republic executives were already in the wings, waiting to assume their future roles. They are now supported by a new Indian branch, with a total of 25 new coders.

According to Andrew, these coders have a lot of experience with bed banks, but would now be pursuing developments in much more sophisticated areas. It is interesting to note that he did address the loss of Furner specifically, explaining that it was a difficult thing to see the last founder of the company leave it behind.

Looking to the Future

However, the vice president has always been keen to emphasise the fact that Travel Republic has a very robust framework of progression and that there are always other skilled individuals willing take on the big jobs in the wake of unexpected departures. It is believed that Roche continued to liaise with the company for some before pursuing a complete split.

In light of the more recent eRevMax merger, which took the form of a two way API XML data connection between the two enterprises (and specifically, the eRevMax RateTiger service), it is thought that hotels will be able to update inventories, availability statistics and room rates in a much more responsive manner.

The Travel Republic agency is now an official part of the eRevMax Channel Ecosystem, a framework which offers it access to over 300,000 accommodation providers, serving more than one million tourists every week. It will also be able to take advantage of the eRevMax Reservation Delivery Service, which allows for the immediate transfer of reservation data to hotel administration staff.

For Travel Republic, the move will hopefully result in a much more efficient booking system, and the ability to keep rate and inventory data as complete and accurate as possible. If considered in line with the new Indian branch and the overall DNATA takeover, it is clear to see that big changes are underway at this company. It just remains to be seen whether they will turn out to be successful ones.

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Alex Viall is the Director of Mustard IT a London based company which offers professional IT Support to businesses across Essex, London and the Home Counties