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Travel agencies using Travelport’s ticketing equipment will book new content with Singapore Airlines without paying a new fee to come, airlines said.
“Singapore Airlines’ KrisConnect program is the airline’s NDC [new distribution capacity] initiative and is designed to quickly provide agencies with the widest diversity of their pricing products, adding personalized content and the ability to deliver custom-designed products,” Kyle Moore, Global Travelport’s head of product proposals told Skift on Thursday ” “As Singapore Airlines’ leading NDC partner, we are working hard with Singapore Airlines on its global KrisConnect implementation. “
Travel agents in the company’s Smartpoint booking formula for e-books with special Singapore content after the signing of the agreements.
“Our integration with Singapore Airlines NDC interface agents to seamlessly reserve KrisConnect NDC content along with all other types of content supported through Travelport,” Moore said. “The end-to-end ebooking procedure is built-in with Smartpoint, which means there are no new formats for agents to learn. If you have any questions about commission situations or other express details, we ask agencies to contact your account manager. “
In July, Singapore Airlines announced that it would inspire agencies to use its new KrisConnect channel for tickets by adding an additional $ 12 for reservations made on the firm’s traditional reservation systems, as reported through Skift.
“To facilitate the firm adoption of the program, we have worked with several generation partners, adding global distribution systems [GDS], such as the one you discussed [Travelport], to make our program available on their platforms,” said one spokesman. “Agents can sign up for the program and choose one of the AIS-certified generation partners to start operating within the channel. “
The agreement represents a Travelport concession on its position a few years ago under previous leadership, when it insisted that airlines use their branded fares and content generation to offer the advanced sales method, now allow airlines to use their own generation.
Travelport is the first of the so-called global distribution systems to have signed an agreement with Singapore to resolve its agents to remain on its platform and e-book tickets without paying more.
Amadeus declined to comment. Sabre said it encourages their spouses’ agencies to log in and industry into the KrisConnect NDC channel if they need the corresponding fees.
Airlines have other attitudes towards their classic partners when distributed to agencies.
Lufthansa Group gave the impression of moving away from generation corporations by saying this week that it would increase its surcharge on tickets booked on the classic corporate reservation systems, as reported through Skift.
Lufthansa Group told agents that it had to transfer qualified premium payments through global distribution systems [GDS]. Amadeus, Saber and Travelport rate Lufthansa Group a higher payment as a penalty because the airline supplies all of its content to agents using their systems and saves some of it at higher costs for agents who book direct. For context, Skift Research subscribers can read the airline’s status distribution report.
“If Lufthansa had tried to oppose the course of distribution, the pandemic and a government bailout would have provided the ideal explanation for why to save appearances,” said Felix Dannegger, managing partner of Oystin Partners, a consulting firm in Gr-felfing, Germany. “The fact that Lufthansa is expanding prices in line with GDS’s highest prices suggests that Lufthansa is confident that its distribution strategy, in addition to the lack of full content, remains the right choice. “
Delta Air Lines’ leading distribution officer said it slowed the progression of the new distribution capacity, rather than working with players of the classic generation in classic terms.
Taking a different route, Air France-KLM and Amadeus agreed on September 10 on new advertising situations to have airline group air tickets delivered to agents in order to make electronic reservations through the Amadeus platform through the most modern sales bureaucracy through collection. a decreased surcharge. Unlike the Singapore Airlines agreement, Air France-KLM entrusts the technical tables to Amadeus to generate the new offerings.
Covid has forced airlines to reconsider everything by adding to re-evaluate their paintings with generation distribution partners.
In general, full-service airlines have been involved in the cost and flexibility of generation when operating with Amadeus, Sabre and Travelport. Airlines have renewed their channel prices and flexibility this year.
“Operators contemplating moving away from full content agreements with Amadeus, Sabre, and Travelport before Covid faced significant profit hazards related to GDS’s charge recovery mechanisms, such as the surcharge,” Said Dannegger of Oystin Partners.
“Now, thanks to Covid, all the threat scenarios from the worst source of income have already materialized, and more,” Dannegger said. “As a result, dealing with the loss of discounts on all content would possibly seem less intimidating, especially when combined with a greater willingness of passengers to purchase directly from the airline. “
“If airlines continue to eliminate the complexity of price and profit management, as we just noted with the elimination of replacement fares on many airlines, and if recreational traffic recovers faster than commercial traffic, this can increase the direct acceleration of channels. at the expense of intermediaries, distribution, ” said Dannegger.
He hasn’t embraced the new offers without any problems.
“I fully sense that existing GDS distribution providers want to fill their content gaps and update their business models,” said Jeff Klee, CEO of Amtrav, CheapAir’s parent company. “But I think efforts like this [Air France-KLM deal with Amadeus] that seek to merge the two have already set us back years in terms of NDC adoption. “
“Because of the way this agreement has been presented in the press, it turns out that Amadeus, to maintain prestige in rates, gives Air France the opportunity to charge Amadeus supplements and subscribers with whom it wants to paint with full content. “, Klee said. I’m probably not qualified to judge, but I will anyway . . . This turns out to be a catastrophic judgmental error. “
Other experts were more optimistic.
“The GDS transfer style, under the recent Amadeus-Air France/KLM agreement, seems to be the most favorable style for the airline industry,” said Igor Marchal, a Paris-based distribution consultant.
“From a functional point of view, it retains the benefits of the robustness and power of GDS’s infrastructure, allows suppliers to maintain their same air ticket flows and bookings at no additional cost, paves the way for NDC airlines to control and their offering, to provide their intrinsic price compared to LCCs. Array and more to deal with customization engines to announce loyalty” Marchal said.
“From a monetary point of view, airlines are transparent winners in agreements like Amadeus did, with particularly low, if not cancelled GDS channel prices,” Marchal said. “GDS incurred massive pricing to become ‘NDC friendly’, however, they have reclaimed their airline distribution business and can continue to grow. Its highly degraded air shipping prices are partly offset by the new GDS rates charged this time to online agencies and control companies. “
Distribution generation is now seriously penalized by the investment costs of the new generation, Marchal added.
Some analysts presented the context of the resolution through Singapore Airlines and other airlines, so far it has been the giant airline teams that have taken over the complex generation distribution formula that agencies benefit from and have incorporated expenses into their fares. several analysts said.
“With the separation of price lists between price lists and ancillary services, it’s the best time for IT prices to also disaggregate,” said Roland Heller, CEO of TIK Systems, a Thailand-based software developer and former CEO of Mercator Asia.
Some industry skeptics said airlines praised their new distribution efforts in recent years, and talked about how much greater the new approach is with rich content and personalized offerings.
“The truth is that for top airlines, NDC is an empty shell,” said Georges Sans, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships for Europe at CTW, an IT consulting firm.
“If you take a look at Air France-KLM’s drive, you still don’t have a full range of supporting content available through NDC, no matter how agencies access it,” Sans said. “This undermines the usefulness of the content for buyers, however, the airline adds a payment to access this content. What a biodiversity strategy. “
Other analysts have been more charitable in innovating distribution.
“While we are fair to NDC, most initial implementations are side movements that don’t bring a ton of tangible benefits to travelers,” Klee said. “However, they are vital because they pave the way for a day to be will offer new features that will gain advantages from airlines, travelers and intermediaries. But to do so, these intermediaries will have to bring a lot of creativity and hard paint; it is harder to wonder if a monetary hit is a component of the package».
“If I were a GDS, I would settle that declining margins would be inevitable, however I would seek to compensate by expanding, not reducing, the reserve base,” Klee said. “It would be offering giant payment reductions, especially for low-value tickets, in exchange for limits on why an airline might not distribute through individual subscribers. “
Some critics have argued that the real driving force is money, to shift generation prices to agencies.
“Airlines want to be fair in the sense that the supplements they’re adding now are just separating generation and distribution costs,” Heller said. “It offers general transparency, which is a smart thing to do. “
With separation, airlines have more flexibility in fare control and rental agents compare apples to apples when they look at network operators rather than cheap operators.
Airlines expect to shift the burden of charges on their own to agencies, analysts said. Agencies won’t like this because many now have little margin and will have to pass it on to travelers.
“Meanwhile, airlines deserve to be transparent in their messages about distribution supplements,” Heller said. “They deserve to say that it’s essentially a fee to pay for the old style of distribution, while some of that money is to subsidize the creation of a new style. “
Not everyone is a fan of how airlines are this effort.
“Lufthansa’s technique is quite radical when deciding recently to build its existing supplement for travel agencies if ebook use GDS,” Sans said. “What a transparent resolution to absolutely reject the contribution of travel agencies in terms of sales and, worse, what transparent resolution not for agencies as a distribution network in those difficult times. “
Lufthansa’s followers things differently.
“What I think is among the airlines that are putting pressure on NDC and GDS, with a few exceptions, is that full-service airlines simply mimic the distribution style of cheap airlines,” said Jorge Daaz, founder and CEO of AirGateway. a Berlin-based aerial content aggregator for agencies.
Ryanair and other cheap car operators can subsidize their airfares by selling competitive incentives for auxiliary facilities and cross-selling other products such as accommodation or car rental. , Sabre or Travelport. Such cross-selling is imaginable through global distribution systems, however, lately technical flexibility is lower and many of the profits of lately do not pass to the airline.
“Full-service carriers, with our NDC-free, are moving to two airline-owned distribution channels: their online customer page and their knowledge flow from API to agencies for business-to-business distribution. through all kinds of partners, adding GDS, non-GDS aggregators like us, corporate booking tools, online agencies, meta-research sites and even more tech-savvy control companies, ”said Daaz of AirGateway.
Some analysts were cautiously skeptical of Travelport’s agreement with Singapore Airlines.
“Travelport has stated that it will access NDC content that is not overloaded, but does not mention that it will also not receive classic GDS charges from the airline,” Daaz said. “I will have to assume that the airline enters into an advertising agreement with the travel company/sellers, adding personal or publicly disclosed bribes, and then the company selects (and PAYE) the generation spouse of your choice, in this case, Travelport. “
Travelport did detail his industrial agreements with Singapore Airlines, but neither he nor his peers do so in principle.
So is the Travelport agreement in Singapore a style of things to come?
“When I look at the Travelport and Singapore Airlines announcement and air France-KLM and Amadeus announcements, I expect to see equivalent ads between those airlines and other GDS before the new distribution models are put into service, in order to content and value parity are in conflict with the GDS,” Dannegger said.
And Travelport, do you see the Singapore agreement, which was advanced in signing, as a model?
“We believe that NDC content agreements will have to recognize the price provided through each component of NDC’s booking procedure to be effective and sustainable for airlines, global distribution systems, and the travel agent community,” Travelport’s Moore said. Chances are we’ll see other models evolve as this new generation begins to become a component of airline distribution strategies. “
“While Covid-19 has led some airlines to slow down the deployment of their NDCs to the market, Singapore Airlines and others are moving forward with their plans at the pace,” Moore said. “Travelport has actively complexed its NDC connections with several active pilot projects underway with a wide variety of agents, adding online agencies, control corporations and groupings, and we will continue to implement this content globally for Singapore and our consumer agencies in the coming months.
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