How Standards Proliferate – Lesson One:
Ornagh Hoban,
VP Marketing & Strategy, Datalex
Datalex
Blog
This week marked the 13th annual OpenTravel Advisory forum, for more see www.opentravel.com
OpenTravel is the defacto specification for travel interoperability. Its adoption is ubiquitous, and the specification has accelerated the evolution of travel distribution.
OpenTravel constituents represent a diverse mix of airline, car and hotel groups along with the more kinetic long tail entities such as day tours, trekking, experiential travel and the like who lean on OpenTravel not just as a specification provider, but as a template to define their capability.
At this year’s forum I covered the discussion around NDC, and what was the implication to the membership.
- What is it: See Datalex CEO, Aidan Brogan’s article in Airline Business on NDC, it is a great primer.
- What’s Datalex’s position: The capability NDC envisions, is what we do; it’s how Datalex drives value for over 50 airlines worldwide, including the largest, most profitable and most innovative. NDC – it’s our DNA, it’s how we work!
- What does it mean to me: There is no doubt that an airline’s capability to merchandize the right product at the right time to the right person is no longer just a good idea, it’s a business imperative. As partners to airlines, and as future players in your own versions of NDC, what does this mean for you?
- Scale/capability: NDC speaks to the need of the airline to own its platform, to be able to present and merchandize its own and partners’ products understanding the consumer’s needs. It expects that as partners to an airline you have system capability to manage hundreds of thousands of search requests in real time, present differentiated results based on consumer context and to drive to a true direct connect.
Our takeaway- Learn the lesson of others who have relied on intermediaries and legacy technology suppliers for distribution and who now face a huge challenge for relevancy. While we have been assured that IATA does not recommend any particular provider, our position is that the demands of the airlines will drive the best fit technologies and standards for use. OpenTravel members have a distinct advantage; they have been doing this for the last 13 years. NDC presents a paradigm where the membership can lead the discussion and drive value to their trading partners. In 2016 60% of airline business will be conducted in a direct and relevant manner across many touch points.
We’re ready for the challenge – Are you?
Gianni Cataldo
VP & GM Americas, Datalex
Datalex was proud to sponsor the CAPA Airlines in Transition Conference in Dublin last week. Lots of lively debate from airline CEOs on regulation, revenue, cost models and competition. Willie Walsh, CEO of IAG in typical frank manner, swept away the excuses: unions, business models etc, and noted management need to be determined to succeed, manage costs and ensure a return on capital invested. Dave Barger, CEO of JetBlue and Christoph Mueller, CEO of Aer Lingus were optimistic that ongoing structural change across industry would improve profitability, and that no one model fits all. The regulators took a unified hit from the airlines present. Alliances were not seen as a guarantee for survival unless the revenue synergies exist. Capacity consolidation and market segmentation will continue to evolve. Datalex CEO Aidan Brogan noted that airlines need to apply more retail science to revenue models for highest margin return. The focus must be on the total travel PNR and traveller experience. He noted that the business infrastructure must support a retail mindset, referencing the WestJet guest experience as an innovative model.
Ornagh Hoban
VP Marketing & Strategy, Datalex
Great content and discussion again at the recent IT Business Forum of AACO, held in Muscat. Quality organisation from AACO on agenda and venue. The landscape in the Middle East is rapidly changing with the advances of Air Arabia, NAS Air, and FlyDubai. AACO members are fully focused on enhancing merchandising, Big Data, and NDC.
Presenters gathered together on stage, and all were asked to give a summary. One by one each gave their experienced opinion and advice. When it came to Massimo from Google: “I would like to summarise as follows, We Are Google”.
So not missing the presented opportunity, and being next to summarise, I opened: “We Are Datalex”.
Peter O’Kelly
Commercial Director
This month’s Airline Business magazine reports on Datalex’s leadership in the airline industry’s retail transformation. At Datalex, we have abstracted from the constraints and restrictions of industry PSS systems to drive innovation. Moreover, we have driven innovation in merchandising where standards did not yet exist. Datalex has a unique pedigree in guiding standards for new distribution practice in industry. As founding members of the OpenTravel Alliance (and current board member), Datalex was a key contributor to the first OpenTravel XML standards for air shopping and more recently in 2012, Datalex’s schema was adopted as the basis for the OpenTravel Merchandising schema, voted as the most proven and scalable in industry. Datalex has supported evolving ATPCO standards, IATA EMD standards and today is a key participant in the IATA NDC working group, working with airlines to support and evolve the NDC standard today and in the future.
Datalex customers require control and agility in their retail platform to keep pace in competitively differentiating their brand and offering. This requires a retail platform that seamlessly integrates to but is not limited by underlying PSS systems or indeed industry standards. With our customers and partners, we continue to outpace, and to look for better, faster and smarter solutions.
Our industry partners share the objective to innovate at pace in support of airline customers. Most recently, we are working closely with PROS to apply big data science to pricing and shopping for more efficient availability, more effective price optimisation and increased profitability for our airlines.
Dominic Clarke
SVP Global Sales
Airlines are focused on transforming their retail strategies, with a view to boosting their bottom line while delivering improved service and value across the traveller experience.
As part of this move, low margin air revenue is being supplemented with high margin ancillary sales. A larger product portfolio offered across an increasing number of channels and touchpoints means the number of merchandising decisions to manage has increased exponentially.
As consumers, we are accustomed to contextual, collaborative and intuitive conversations with retailers such as Amazon, Zappos or eBay feeding our demand of who we are, where we are and what we value… for relevance in real time. We look to minimise dwell time in an always-connected world. We do not want more aggregated content and choice which adds complexity, has no context to our shopping journey, and takes no account
Ornagh Hoban
VP Marketing & Strategy, Datalex
Datalex’s VP & GM Americas Gianni Cataldo talks about increasing traveler engagement, watch.
Datalex has released a TDP enhancement to comply with the United States Department of Transportation (US DOT) provisions of Consumer Rule II pertaining to the disclosure and assessment of baggage fees, ahead of 24th July 2012 deadline.
The mandate applies to all journeys where travel is to, from or within the U.S. and states the baggage allowances and charges of the first marketing carrier apply throughout the journey. The DOT rules require the disclosure of baggage allowances and charges at the time of fare quotation, and must be added to electronic tickets and included in email itinerary confirmations. For international itineraries, airlines can use the IATA Most Significant Carrier (MSC) standard for deciding which carrier’s rules should apply.
Ornagh Hoban
VP Marketing & Strategy, Datalex
As I read a Sky News article recently by Emma Birchley entitled “Supermarkets ‘Using Dodgy Pricing Tactics’”, it was a mix of indignation and relief. Can it really be true, the friendly folks at my local supermarket are using “dodgy pricing tactics” and less than clear promotions, so that I actually pay more than I thought as I put items into my shopping cart?
In a statement, Tesco said: “We make every effort to ensure we act in accordance with government guidelines on price promotions.” And Asda (Wal-Mart) added: “When we do get it wrong we put our hands up to say sorry and put things right as quickly as possible.” These statements sound very similar to those we hear about airline ancillary fees and charges.
“Why relief?” I hear you ask. Datalex works with pioneering airlines that are on a path to being travel retailers. These airlines are engaging travellers and personalising products to enhance the traveller’s experience, improve loyalty and of course drive revenue. It’s therefore a relief to hear that even the retailing gurus don’t always get it right, so we shouldn’t expect that airlines will either. Only by trying and learning will they improve.
Mike Naylor
Business Development Director, Datalex
Datalex recently sponsored the CAPA Airlines in Transition Conference in Istanbul. An airline CEO event, it covered a broad spectrum of ills and remedies affecting the industry. One of the more interesting insights was the general opinion, echoed by a number of CEOs, that membership of a global alliance did little to fuel innovation and growth, or improve services for the small to medium sized airline. By far the most effective strategy for such airlines was to follow more bilateral agreements with partner airlines that could extend network reach, provide more substantial feeder numbers from markets which matter. In addition there needs to be a like-minded management culture in order to make it work, and not appear as purely a CEO-CEO quest.
Carriers that contributed single digit percentages to the alliance had very little say, or room, at the alliance decision table. At the same time these smaller airlines have to pour significant funds into maintaining complicated integration standards which do not produce the ROI. The cost of maintaining such integration is not proportionate between the biggest and smallest alliance member, and therefore it becomes a more critical and difficult justification.
Peter O’Kelly
Commercial Director, Datalex