Travel management company Direct Travel announced the launch of Direct Lift, a leisure air and hotel booking platform. The new tool will provide its more than 900 travel advisors with access to leading air and hotel agreements along with an easy-to-use interface that can be accessed 24/7, 365 days across the world.

Advisors who join Direct Travel will have access to the platform which enables advisors to reserve, ticket, change, cancel, and invoice air transactions and reserve and invoice hotel bookings from a single, user-friendly interface.

Vivienne Kouba, vice president of Direct Travel’s leisure travel in the U.S. and the driver behind the launch of Direct Lift, said, “We are delighted to be launching this tool to help improve the productivity and profitability of our employees and independent travel advisors. The industry is seeing more and more highly successful travel advisors without Global Distribution System (GDS) experience, and this tool empowers them to service their clients’ air travel needs with the best pricing in a straightforward interface.”

As an early adopter of the tool in the Mequon office, Tracy Nickodem says that “Direct Lift has been a game changer for me. It is super easy to use - no formats to memorize, and the search filters are very helpful. And I can easily add fees as discussed with clients.”

Direct Travel currently has 250 employee travel advisors and over 700 independent travel advisors in addition to agencies they host as part of their Direct ASCENT hosting program.

“Throughout the pandemic, we welcomed quite a few independent travel advisors to our hosting environment because of the support we offer through our supplier management and leisure support teams and our marketing programs to help grow their business,” Gerard Bellino, executive vice president of leisure travel for Direct Travel said in a statement. “Now, with Direct Lift, we add a cutting-edge booking platform to the mix – and the feedback we have received so far has been tremendous.”

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