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Dubai-based travel technology provider Illusions Online has signed a "substantial" deal with one of the biggest DMCs in Thailand – Go Vacation Thailand - to supply all its travel technology.

Go Vacation Thailand is part of the German Rewe Group, the third largest tour operator in Germany. The DMC has 300 staff and offices in all major tourist destinations in Thailand, servicing around 200,000 clients every year.

The value of the contract was not disclosed, but Christoph Mueller, managing director, GoVacation, Thailand said the company was making a “substantial investment”. He said: “We had a look at a few different products and Illusions was the one we had the most confidence in. We have a sister company based in the US called New World Travel and they have been using Illusions for the past year and a half so it makes sense for us too.”

Following the product implementation in Thailand - the plan is to roll out the new technology with Go Vacation's subsidiaries in Indonesia and Sri Lanka next year. “The first step is Thailand and then in May next year we are looking at Indonesia and then Sri Lanka,” said Mueller.

Illusions will supply a complete centralised technology system for Go Vacation to automate every aspect of the business - from content management, website management, contract management to online booking systems.

Faisal Memon, CEO, Illusions Online said the aim was to get Go Vacations up and running with its new system in a just a few months time.

“The implementation timeframe is quite a small. With a lot of technology in the market, there are companies who want to build their own systems and it just takes forever – you are talking one or two years trying to make it work. But in today’s world, you need a system that comes out of the box. With Illusions, that’s a huge USP. Having worked with tour operators and DMCs for several years we have developed a product which pretty much fits the bulk and the needs of the business. There’s always going to be tweaks and extra development but we are talking about having Go Vacations up and running by the end of the year - which given the size of the business and the operations it’s a huge task.”

Memon added that while investment in technology had slowed substantially in the travel industry during the recession, he was now seeing a bounce back this year.

“Things have been very slow in the travel industry over the past two years, and when things are slow people stop investing in technology. But while business was slow we invested a lot in our product. We have launched different editions of our product; we have created new platforms for small to medium companies - so all of that has paid off this year where we have seen a lot of those businesses coming back again. We are seeing investment going back into technology.”