Elly Yates-Roberts |
Gopass Global has collaborated with Microsoft to jointly build a data analytics platform powered by artificial intelligence (AI) to provide insights into safer travel for business and leisure travellers.
The pre-travel risk management platform analyses and scores Covid-related travel risk in order to provide accurate information for travellers when planning interstate and international trips. It was developed by Tony Ohlsson, founder and CEO of AlphaZetta Consulting, and Mark Radford, founder and director, following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The company has constructed a data lake that takes information from 35 different services, covering 240 countries, 3,900 airports, 732 airlines and 260 aircraft. It has also developed 37 separate risk models that interpret the data to provide an assessment of the risk of a trip.
The platform analyses both static information, such as the layout and management of different airplanes, and continually updated information about Covid-19 infection rates and travel regulations for countries and regions around the world. Gopass’s algorithms then score and interpret the data and provide the insights either as a dashboard direct to the customer, or as an API so that the data can be integrated with a travel agent’s or corporate travel-software system.
Gopass Global’s cloud platform is entirely Microsoft Azure-based and uses a range of Azure services such as Azure API Management, Azure Active Directory, Azure App Services, Azure Cosmos DB and Azure Databases for MySQL Flexible Server.
The company has now signed international distribution agreements with organisations including Sabre, Global Travel Network, Lufthansa City Centre and Hickory Global Partners.
“Our platform takes a huge amount of fast-changing information into account to provide real time risk scores for pretty much any proposed trip,” said Mark Radford, CEO of Gopass Global. “Corporations need to get their people back travelling, doing deals, building relationships, and they need to do it safely. We’re helping them do this easily and affordably. For leisure travellers, we remove the complexity of trawling through countless sources to check if it’s safe to go home, visit friends, or discover a new city.”
Gopass Global will continue leveraging Microsoft’s product stack to develop the platform, with possibilities to expand its scope to account for geopolitical or environmental risk.
“Gopass Global is an example of the innovation, agility, and intelligent use of data and AI that is possible with Microsoft Azure,” said Lizelle Hughes, director of software-as-a-service and independent service vendor partnerships at Microsoft Australia and New Zealand. “Mark, Tony and the team have created an entirely new company and put seven products in market in less than 12 months, and the platform choice will be a key differentiator as the product’s use case expands in the decisions of organisations and individuals as international borders reopen.”