Leonidas Zotos, Country Manager Travelport

Official Tourism Message

2015 has not been an easy year for Greece and business has not been easy in the travel industry.

But now, almost at the end of the year, what I can see when I look at 2015 is the courage, the passion, the professionalism of all Greek travel players: that’s why I can feel optimistic even after such a difficult year – and that’s why the Greek travel industry deserves to trust in its own strength.

You can think that there is not much that travel companies can do to improve the general economic landscape – and this is true, but only at first sight. Travel and tourism industry is a pillar of the economy and life of our country and we have the responsibility to drive the upturn.

As Travelport, what we can do, and what we are actually doing, is to focus on the country’s needs to provide our customers with dedicated innovation and help them to better compete in this situation and be ready to fully leverage on the general landscape improvements, as they come.

Since 2012, we have strategically invested over $475 million in products with a focus on redefining our Travel Commerce Platform to address the trends, inefficiencies and unmet needs of the travel industry.

This way, we have transformed the traditional global distribution system (“GDS”) concept into an open platform and a graphically rich, single user interface to enable marketing and sales of new travel content, previously unable to reach travellers through the travel agency channel. And the Greek travel industry has wisely taken the most from this benefit to improve efficiency and create new streams of revenue.

With our customers’ professionalism and initiative, together with our technology and innovation, I can only see a winning future for travel industry in Greece.