Tech talk IN CONVERSATION… Simon Ferguson, regional director
UK & Ireland, Travelport Rob Gill talks to Simon Ferguson about the future of GDSs, IATA’s NDC and the challenge of catering for maverick travellers
EASYJET
PREPARES FOR NEXT PUSH INTO BUSINESS TRAVEL
EASYJET IS TO UNVEIL new technology designed to make it easier for TMCs and corporate clients to book the low-cost airline’s flights. The airline, which announced record profits for the last financial year (to end of September 2012), is currently working with the three main GDS providers – Amadeus, Sabre and Travelport – on technology innovations to make Easyjet’s inventory easier to access. Easyjet chief executive Carolyn McCall said she expected this work to be completed by the spring. The airline’s share of the European business travel market increased by around 0.5 per cent last year, to 6 per cent “in a quite tough, flat or declining business travel market overall”.
She added that the main strategy was on making more revenue from these corporate travel sales rather than growing volume to gain market share. “This is not about volume but about incremental margins.” she said. Paul Simmons, UK director for Easyjet, added that they were looking to find the “sweet spot” where a higher margin per seat from could be achieved from business travellers while also saving money for the corporate client. Easyjet has already agreed deals with major TMCs, such as American Express, FCM Travel Solutions and Portman Travel, as well as securing a contract to become a preferred supplier of travel to the UK’s politicians through a new deal with Hillgate Travel.
Simon Ferguson
What kind of innovations have TMCs and buyers
been using to combat the economic squeeze? Many corporates now are considering a wider choice of accommodation. We are investing in hotels and hospitality, particularly through Travelport Rooms and More, which is where we bring the smaller, fragmented hotel content into the market. Things like Hurricane Sandy challenge the TMC to be more responsive and flexible – for example, we launched a product called Travelport Mobile Agent this year which allows you to access Galileo through a smartphone or iPad, enabling many of our corporate sales consultants to rebook people outside traditional hours.
There has been a lot of discussion about the future of GDSs – what’s your view? Fundamentally, we want to be part of these new distribution methods –
if you look at our Smartpoint application, you can now search the Travelport GDS by just typing in: “I want to go from London to Barcelona
Is IATA’s New Distribution Capability (NDC) a threat
to companies such as Travelport? It’s a concept around standardising the way that the industry and airlines
distribute API-based content. That in itself is fine – we are supportive of standards, and coming up with standards which enable airlines to be able to maximise their marketing and merchandising. However, it is purely conceptual, and it’s very difficult to make a further comment at this stage.
Are your mobile services catching up with what
leisure travel offers in terms of apps and other online innovations? I think we are catching up – for example, within Smartpoint you can now do
map searches, so a TMC can scroll over two points on a Google Map and see fares delivered for that trip. We want to give the maverick traveller the tools to make them feel they are getting access to the type of experience that drives them to be a maverick in the first place – but through the TMC and travel policy channel. We have to give TMCs the tools to offer a flexible, fluid and responsive service.
CLICK TRAVEL UNVEILS HOLD FUNCTION FOR RAIL TICKETS 28
CLICK TRAVEL is launching a new function allowing business travellers to hold rail tickets during the booking process. The technology specialist TMC said that it could now offer the facility of holding a rail ticket and its price for up to two hours. Click said this new
function would particularly help travellers who needed to secure pre-trip approval before making a booking. The system emails users to let them know when authorisation has been granted and bookings are automatically cancelled if they are not confirmed within the two-hour period.
Simon Mclean, Click’s managing director, said: “Holding rail tickets has been a common feature-request from our customers, so we’re delighted to deliver this innovation. This is yet another example of where developing and controlling all of the technology
we deliver to customers enables us to out-innovate our competitors.” The company added that the hold process applied to all ticket types, including advance purchase tickets and all delivery mechanisms - even ticket on departure.
on Christmas Day”, and we will translate that into GDS code. We want to take the best of new distribution technology and add it into the GDS platform. We are also bringing a wider range of content into the GDS than we’ve had before – we’re about to launch the ability to search low-cost airlines alongside scheduled airlines for the first time.