IATA is growing its Asia-Pacific headquarters in Singapore with the move to a larger office at Mapletree Business City that can accommodate 40 per cent more employees, including a Global Delivery Center (GDC).
“Singapore is home to over 150 employees represented by 27 nationalities. With this larger office, we are able to accommodate an increase in our headcount, an expansion of training opportunities for aviation professionals, and an improvement in our capacity to host more regional industry meetings,” said Conrad Clifford, IATA’s regional vice president for Asia-Pacific.
IATA is also collaborating with the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore to establish a Global Safety Predictive Analytics Research Center n Singapore to improve aviation safety.
According to IATA, some 1,700 aviation professionals from 25 countries participated in courses at the IATA training centre in 2017.
Last year, the IATA Singapore office also became one of four GDC locations where the back office functions for IATA’s Financial Settlement Systems have been consolidated.
The Singapore GDC operations team handles customers speaking 12 languages from over 16 time zones. Twenty-three new jobs have been added as a result of the GDC in Singapore. In 2017, the IATA office in Singapore processed close to US$70 billion in settlements for the Asia-Pacific region.
With its four GDCs in Singapore, Beijing, Madrid and Montreal, IATA says it is now better positioned to meet increasing expectations of airlines, travel agents and freight forwarders using the FSS for 24/7 customer service. The GDC will also support the roll-out of the products associated with the New Generation of IATA Settlement Systems (NewGen ISS).
By 2036, 7.8 billion people are expected to travel (up from 4.3 billion expected in 2018). Of that, 3.5 billion trips will be to, from or within the Asia-Pacific region.
