Today is a very special day for all of us at Southwest as we reached a milestone. This morning, we announced that Southwest is now taking booking through industry-standard business travel bookings systems. We joined forces with Travelport as our launch partner to bring our everyday low fares with Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC) ticketing and settlement to its Global Distribution Systems (GDS).
Simply put, this allows for Corporate Travel Managers, Travel Management Companies, and business travel decision-makers to conveniently book and modify reservations, as well as better manage their organization's travel with just a few clicks. As you know, we pride ourselves on owning the entire Customer journey. This process has proved incredibly successful in our nearly 50-year history. However, for managed business travel, we’ve seen this become cumbersome and prevent some companies from choosing us over our competitors.
This is just another step forward in our journey to build the best business travel-focused Team in the industry. Later this year, we’ll add similar capabilities to Amadeus’ GDS’.
As you might recall, last year we announced a major investment in our Team, which included investing in these industry-standard processes, adding more account managers to work with more organizations across the nation, standing up a new Travel Management Company Relations Team, and re-branding our Team as Southwest Business. I’m proud to report that we are making waves in the industry and people are taking notice.
While we are all working through the impacts of COVID-19, please know that all of us at Southwest and Southwest Business are thinking of you. While we don’t know when things will resume, we’re ready to work with you to help manage your return to whatever the new normal will look like.
To learn more about how we can help you and your organization manage travel, please visit Southwest.com/AboutBusiness.