EGYPTAIR Tourism and Duty Free Co, has announced a new agreement with IBM to leverage IBM Cloud capabilities to scale and modernise EGYPTAIR Duty Free back-end operations and host its SAP Travel Retail System.
By adopting IBM Cloud, EGYPTAIR will also leverage IBM Watson Assistant, an AI virtual agent, to transform their travellers’ shopping experience.
The agreement was signed by Eng. Wael Abdoush, General Manager, IBM Egypt and Reda Metwally, Head, EGYPTAIR Tourism and Duty Free Co, in the presence of Roshdy Zakaria, EGYPTAIR Holding Chairman and CEO, a group of leaders of the two companies and Atef Roshdy, ECS Company manager – agent of SAP Company, which participated in the project.
With a hybrid cloud approach from IBM, EGYPTAIR Duty Free will migrate its ERP workload to IBM Cloud while staying connected and fully integrated with the Frequent-Flyer Programme of EGYPTAIR Airlines and Star Alliance companies to provide shopping services from EGYPTAIR’s duty free outlets and attract new customers. For example, EGYPTAIR Duty Free customers will make all payment transactions through a secure point of sale (POS) that is part of IBM Cloud infrastructure.
As part of this engagement, IBM will provide technology and industry expertise to enhance the digital services for EGYPTAIR Duty-Free by using IBM Watson Assistant, running on IBM Cloud. The AI virtual agent will provide EGYPTAIR Duty-Free customers with a differentiated shopping experience, enabling them to do online shopping through the Duty-Free website including orders placement, payment and delivery inside the plane, thus ensuring seamless retail experience.
Zakaria said: “We have a long history of cooperation with IBM, as our partner for more than 30 years. The technology transformation journey has included many progressive steps to develop our operations, by leveraging IBM Cloud capabilities and providing our customers with a world-class personal experience.”
Metwally said: “The new technology will help us to reinvent our services and unlock an array of new choices for our customers. With IBM and SAP technology, we will modernise our operations through the supply chain to meet the evolving needs of our customers and suppliers.”
In the era of COVID-19, maximising capabilities and developing new opportunities are critical business opportunities for the aviation sector.
Abdoush said: “We’re very pleased to partner with EGYPTAIR Duty Free in their digital transformation journey. Through technologies like hybrid cloud and AI, EGYPTAIR will take their customers’ relationship to the next level, surfacing distinct new trends to change travellers’ experience and ensure security, agility and operational efficiency.”
The collaboration comes within the framework of EGYPTAIR’s strategy in line with Egypt’s Digital Transformation roadmap to create an easy, digitised and personalised customers’ experiences.
IBM has a long history of working with the airlines industry as well as with leading travel and transportation companies around the world for over 70 years. IBM has collaborated with EGYPTAIR for over 30 years hosting core applications on both IBM hardware and software.
