Article from BTNews 16 MARCH 2020
Duffel online booking progress
British travel tech company Duffel says progress is being made with its revolutionary online booking system with beta operations being run in cooperation with a with number of top-line travel agencies.
Co-founder and CEO Steve Domin says the system should be made public by the end of the year.
In October 2010, the start-up announced a $30m Series B funding round from investors Index Ventures and existing investors Benchamark Capital and Blossom Capital. Already involved are some of the largest carriers, including American Airlines, British Airways, Lufthansa Group, Aegean and United.
Duffel is promising to reinvent the infrastructure behind online travel booking by enabling travel agencies to plug-in directly to airlines’ reservation systems via an API to pull real-time flight offers, make bookings, access live seat availability and buy extra services.
Domin said new digital and mobile travel agencies, Duffel’s target market, had until now been forced to accept long lead times and high costs to access “clunky” flight booking systems, legacy APIs and outdated cryptic screens.
He added: “By giving agents a way to connect instantly with airlines, Duffel represents the biggest shake-up of the travel sector since the launch of budget air travel”.
(See also BTN 28 October 2019).
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