EGYPTAIR Tourism and Duty Free Co. Lands Cloud contract with IBM

EGYPTAIR Tourism and Duty Free Co. announced, March 10, a new agreement with IBM to leverage IBM Cloud capabilities.

The agreement aims at scaling and modernizing EGYPTAIR Duty Free back-end operations and hosting its SAP Travel Retail System.

General Manager IBM Egypt Wael Abdoush and head of EGYPTAIR Tourism and Duty Free Co. Reda Metwally signed the agreement, 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.

Using a hybrid cloud approach from IBM, EGYPTAIR Duty Free is going to 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 instance, EGYPTAIR Duty Free customers will be able to make all payment transactions through a secure point of sale that is part of IBM Cloud infrastructure.

IBM is going to provide technology and industry expertise in order to enhance the digital services for EGYPTAIR Duty-Free by using IBM Watson Assistant, running on IBM Cloud.

Moreover, the AI virtual agent will provide EGYPTAIR Duty-Free customers with a differentiated shopping experience, so that they will be able to do online shopping through the Duty-Free website including orders placement, payment and delivery inside the plane, thus ensuring seamless retail experience.

On his part, Zakaria referred that they have a long history of cooperation with IBM, as their 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,” he stated.

In the same page, Metwally affirmed that the new technology will help them reinvent their services and unlock an array of new choices for their customers.

“With IBM and SAP technology, we will modernize our operations through the supply chain to meet the evolving needs of our customers and suppliers.”

Abdoush noted that maximizing capabilities and developing new opportunities are critical business opportunities for the aviation sector during period of Covid-19.

Furthermore, he expressed his happiness to partner with EGYPTAIR Duty Free in their digital transformation journey.

The 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.