·         The pioneer flagship airline will migrate its Duty-Free operations to IBM Cloud and leverage IBM Watson Assistant to transform travelers’ experience.

By : Bakinam Khaled

EGYPTAIR Tourism and Duty Free Co. announced today a new agreement with IBM (NYSE: IBM) to leverage IBM Cloud capabilities to scale and modernize 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 travelers’ shopping experience.

The agreement was signed by Eng. Wael Abdoush, General Manager IBM Egypt and Mr. Reda Metwally, head of EGYPTAIR Tourism and Duty Free Co, in the presence of Pilot Roshdy Zakaria, EGYPTAIR Holding Chairman and CEO, a group of leaders of the two companies, and Mr. Atef Roshdy, ECS Company manager - Agent of SAP Company, which participated in setting up 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 Program 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 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.

On this occasion, Pilot Roshdy Zakaria commented: "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."

"The new technology will help us to reinvent our services and unlock an array of new choices for our customers “said Mr. Reda Metwally Chairman and CEO, EGYPTAIR Duty Free “With IBM and SAP technology, we will modernize our operations through the supply chain to meet the evolving needs of our customers and suppliers.”

In the era of Covid-19, maximizing capabilities and developing new opportunities are critical business opportunities for the aviation sector. We’re very pleased to partner with   EGYPTAIR Duty Free in their digital transformation journey,” said Wael Abdoush, General Manager, IBM Egypt. “Through technologies like hybrid cloud and AI, EGYPTAIR will take their customers’ relationship to the next level, surfacing distinct new trends to change travelers’ experience and ensure security, agility and operational efficiency.” 

This collaboration comes within the framework of EGYPTAIR's strategy in line with Egypt's digital transformation roadmap to create an easy, digitized and personalized 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.