Airlines’ Relationships with GDS Companies

This is the fourth in our continuing series about airline GDS systems – where they’ve been and where they’re going. We started by looking at the need for an automated way to handle unbundled pricing (click here), covered a possible future solution, the electronic miscellaneous document, (click here) and looked at some GDS history and how the industry evolved to where we are today (click here). Now, we look at how GDSs have responded to the airline merchandising craze.

With all the debate, even vitriol, over how airlines’ ancillary services should be sold, you might suspect that GDS companies have been sitting on their hands. It has, after all, been four years since Air Canada pulled its Tango fares from the GDSs because they could not display the attributes of its fare families.

But Amadeus, Sabre and Travelport have each tackled at least some aspects of airline merchandising. The development often begins in the airline IT side of the company and may initially be focused on the carrier’s Web site before it is incorporated into the GDS.

Here are a few of their achievements and future plans:

In 2007, Sabre launched several capabilities within the GDS.

Branded Fares, first launched with Qantas, enabled the airline to package and brand a variety of fares featuring different attributes. There are multiple price points with common rules within each fare family that are individually inventory controlled on each flight according to demand. However, an agent needs only look for the lowest available fare within the chosen fare family.

Sabre enabled Midwest Airlines to sell seats with extra legroom through the GDS.

An XML connection was available to an airline for the first time. Sabre had been connecting with hotel companies and with Expedia for several years. AirTran used the connectivity to offer seat maps in the Sabre GDS.

The following year, Sabre introduced Attribute-Based Shopping, which allows agents to filter searches using options such as seat selection, baggage charges, lounge access, trip insurance and onboard meals.

Travelport is the first – and only – GDS company that has linked with Air Canada’s XML application programming interface, called AC2U. The result is Travelport Agencia, an integrated Web-based shopping and booking application that provides agents in Canada with the carrier’s full range of fare families and a la carte options via the GDS. When a booking is completed, all information is integrated into a PNR.

A far more ambitious project is in the works: The Travelport Universal Desktop, which will allow agents to access content from multiple sources. Those sources might include other GDSs, assuming commercial agreements are achieved, or XML application programming interfaces such as Air Canada’s AC2U API. The project gained momentum when Travelport acquired the assets of G2 SwitchWorks, which had been developing a multi-source agency desktop.

Amadeus has approached the merchandising phenomenon from two sides.

Working with Qantas, Iberia and other carriers, it has been developing an Airline Retailing Platform that will enable airlines to showcase features and brand attributes such as flat beds or satellite television via mouse-over pop-ups on the availability screen.

The pop-ups will work on both the Amadeus Selling Platform’s graphical user interface for travel agents and the more traditional interface that emulates the old “green screen.”

Once an agent has selected a flight, the system will display a menu of upsell opportunities, such as desirable seat locations, seats with additional legroom, lounge access, meals or other optional services.

Amadeus also is developing a multi-source desktop for the corporate market called Amadeus One.

Technological Roadblocks

A few months ago, Gordon Wilson, Travelport GDS’ president and chief executive officer described one of the roadblocks to innovation in the GDS industry in his blog.

“The most immediate technology challenge is the aging ‘green screen’ technology used by our travel agency client base – and the historic lack of investment in a true alternative. While most GDS companies have added a ‘point and click’ user interface for their products, it amounts to little more than a graphical skin on top of a cryptic entry workflow process. It’s not enough to accommodate a new world of unbundled content, merchandising, cross-selling and upselling – not just for airlines but for all content suppliers.

Because many agents resist using graphical user interfaces, GDS companies – and other technology providers that seek to link agents with suppliers – have had to develop ways for agents to use cryptic commands even in a modern computing environment. As Wilson noted, GDSs provide graphical user interfaces that are designed to look like green screens, and functionality has to be “dumbed down.”

In the next edition, we’ll look at how the airline-agent relationship might evolve in a new era of connectivity.