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Some of the industry’s leading travel management
companies, online agencies, and global distribution systems (GDSs)
have confirmed their support for plans to implement recently
developed, industry-wide technology standards which enable
shopping, booking, payment, and reporting of ancillary services.
American Express Business Travel, BCD Travel, Carlson
Wagonlit Travel, Despegar, Expedia, Egencia, HRG, Opodo, Orbitz,
Orbitz for Business, Travelocity, Travelocity Business, Amadeus,
Sabre Travel Network and Travelport have all agreed to support common
technology approaches for the merchandising of airline ancillary
services.
British Airways, Delta Air Lines, LAN
and WestJet are also in support of the development of this capability as an
option for distributing new products and services. Additionally,
Air New Zealand has confirmed that it is mobilizing OC and EMD
projects.
By combining ATPCO’s (Airline Tariff
Publishing Company) category for optional services “OC” fare
filing capabilities with soon-to-be-enabled Electronic
Miscellaneous Documents (EMD), airlines will be able to quickly
introduce their revenue-building ancillaries to the broadest
travel audience through both indirect and direct distribution
channels.
The group of travel industry buyers also endorses the
development of common messaging standards for direct API solutions
for those airlines that wish to manage the ancillary data directly
with a GDS, enabling the easy and efficient shopping, selling,
payment and reporting of ancillaries.
Over the past year, many airlines have evolved
their business model in an effort to generate incremental revenue
by either creating product bundles that differentiate their
offerings or by bundling and unbundling various products and
services, such as premium seating or baggage fees.
Many capabilities enabling the sales of ancillary
services already exist within the GDS environments. Airlines that
adopt industry technology standards are expected to plan how to
best leverage it this year. The GDSs plan to provide corporations
and travel agencies the ability to shop, book and fulfill airline
ancillary services to travelers by late 2010.
“Convinced that merchandising and ancillary revenues are an
effective way to differentiate and diversify in an industry highly
pushed towards commoditization, LAN initiated a couple of years
ago an important effort in order to actively participate in these
business streams,” said Sergio Mendoza, vice president,
Distribution and Revenue Management at LAN. “A multichannel
strategy definitely helps us better serve our customers and
represents a competitive advantage. On the other hand, standards
are necessary in order to simplify and make the multichannel
distribution feasible and efficient. We have a huge challenge
defining those standards for a business model that is being
created as we speak, but that is what makes all this so much fun.”
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