Travelport and Riyadh Air Expand Global Reach with Advanced Retailing Partnership, Driving a New Era of Smart Airline Distribution

Published on November 22, 2025

A major shift in global air distribution is unfolding as Travelport, a leading technology platform powering reservations for hundreds of thousands of travel suppliers, finalises a multi-year agreement with Riyadh Air, the rapidly emerging Saudi Arabian national carrier. This strategic collaboration marks a key step in reshaping how the airline delivers fares, services, and personalised offers to travellers worldwide.

Riyadh Air, created under the ownership of the Public Investment Fund and envisioned as a flagship component of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 transformation, is building its commercial foundations around digital innovation. The airline aims to redefine the region’s aviation landscape through advanced retailing models, a modern fleet pipeline of over 180 aircraft, and an ambitious target to serve 100 destinations by the end of the decade. By partnering with Travelport, Riyadh Air ensures its global entry is strengthened by a sophisticated distribution ecosystem capable of scaling with its growth.

At the heart of the agreement is the integration of Riyadh Air’s content—both New Distribution Capability (NDC) offers and traditional fare structures—into Travelport’s expansive marketplace. This ensures that travel agencies, corporate travel buyers, and intermediaries connected to Travelport gain immediate access to the airline’s full suite of products. Riyadh Air’s decision to prioritise NDC reflects its identity as a digitally native airline, showcasing a deliberate move away from legacy systems and toward a streamlined, dynamic, and customer-centric retailing approach.

The collaboration will also align Travelport with the airline’s Offer and Order host system, enabling deeper connectivity that supports dynamic pricing, packaged ancillaries, and more personalised shopping experiences. This level of integration is expected to elevate retailing performance, reduce distribution frictions, and ensure Riyadh Air’s travellers receive consistent and enriched offers regardless of booking channel.

A central advantage for agencies lies in Travelport’s new Content Curation Layer, an AI-driven innovation designed to normalise and aggregate multiple content sources. This technology simplifies comparison between NDC offers and traditional fares, reducing complexity while ensuring accuracy across search and shopping displays. As more airlines shift toward NDC-powered frameworks, tools like the Content Curation Layer have become vital to maintaining clarity and efficiency for travel sellers. For Riyadh Air, this ensures its retail-ready content is seamlessly delivered to the global market and displayed in the most intuitive and competitive way.

“We are delighted to partner with Riyadh Air as they embark on their journey to become a leading international airline,” said Damian Hickey, Global Head of Travel Partners at Travelport. “Riyadh Air represents a new generation of digitally native carriers, and our multi-source content approach will enable them to deliver personalized, retail-ready offers to travelers through our agency network. This partnership demonstrates our commitment to supporting innovative airlines as they modernize the travel experience.”

The partnership also underscores Saudi Arabia’s broader ambition to position Riyadh as one of the world’s leading aviation hubs. By enabling Riyadh Air to immediately connect with a vast international network of travel agencies, Travelport supports the airline’s accelerated route launches, global brand visibility, and customer acquisition goals. With strong backing from the nation’s Vision 2030 strategy and the capability to deploy advanced digital retailing from day one, Riyadh Air is poised to emerge as a major force in global aviation.

As this long-term agreement takes effect, the collaboration between Travelport and Riyadh Air represents more than a technical integration. It symbolises a new phase of airline retailing—one defined by intelligent content, smarter distribution pathways, and an elevated traveller experience. For both companies, the partnership creates a foundation for innovation that aligns with the future of global travel commerce.