Airlines Transitioning From Merchandisers To Retailers

In the past few years airlines have done remarkably well in merchandising their scheduled services - seats and seat related products and services. However, to transition from merchandising to retailing represents a significant challenge. To start with, this step change - merchandising to retailing - calls for a transition from flight centricity to customer centricity, a challenge in itself. No question, the desire and the willingness for customer centricity are there. However, the transition from flight to customer centricity is monumental given the existence of legacy systems (PSS and conventional payment systems, for example), legacy processes (PNR, and multiple IDs and documents, for example), and the ongoing influence of the traditional third party distributors (that still handle on an average 50% of the bookings, for example).