Travel giant signs €100m outsourcing deal

TUI, owner of Thomson and First Choice, books into five-year unified communications contract with Deutsche Telekom

T-Systems has provided WAN services to the travel group for the past five years

UK-based travel agent giant TUI Travel has awarded a five-year network infrastructure outsourcing contract reported to be worth €100m (£88.2m) to Deutsche Telekom’s corporate customer arm T-Systems.

Under the deal, T-Systems will take on end-to-end responsibility for providing integrated voice, data and mobile services to TUI’s major brands, such as Thomson and First Choice, in the mainstream travel sector, covering 25,000 staff in 2,370 travel agency shops and 73 other offices across the UK, Ireland, Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

The deal will not affect the number of IT staff the travel group employs, a TUI spokesperson told Computing.

TUI – a FTSE100-listed company born of a merger between First Choice and Germany’s TUI AG – says the contract will allow it to modernise its telecommunications, implement common business processes and significantly reduce costs. The deal will also allow TUI to rationalise the number of suppliers it uses for voice and data services.

“We selected T-Systems to integrate and enhance our telecommunications services as they have the proven technological and global expertise to manage a project of this scope and size. This project will transform our communication capabilities, enable greater collaboration between TUI colleagues, deliver better customer service and provide significant cost savings,” said Jim Mann, chief information officer at TUI Travel.

T-Systems has provided WAN services to the travel group for the past five years, so was in a good position to integrate IP-based unified communications services.

The contract is also thought to be one of the world’s largest rollouts of Microsoft Office Communicator.

This will enable travel agents to deliver better customer service, said a TUI spokesperson. “For example, if I’m in a shop in Luton and want to talk about a destination in Africa, I can put the customer in direct contact with an expert on that region instantly,” she added.