Head In The Clouds Or Head In The Sand? Innovation In Travel Related Search & Booking, Channel, Payment And Business Efficiency - Equally A Traveller Satisfaction And Revenue Improvement Topic

Transcript

Martin Warner:So, head in the sands or head in the clouds? Innovation in travel-related search and booking channel, payment, and business efficiency. All of them are equally an opportunity for traveller satisfaction and also revenue improvement. So let me introduce our panelists. From Amadeus, VP Airline Commercial. John Dabkowski. From Korean Air, Vice President John Jackson. From MTT, Director of Consulting and Digital Insights, Glenville Morris. From Orlando International Airport, Senior Director Marketing and Air Service Development, Vicki Jaramillo. From SAP Mobile Services, Senior Director of Value Services, Johnny Thorsen. And from UATP, Manager of Product Development, Rachel Morowitz. Thank you, Martin. So welcome everybody. I think I've— Ultimately, this session relates to distribution and their innovation in search, the evolution of mobile, the experience of the traveler throughout the booking process, including payment, and of course, importantly, their experience on the trip itself. The topics that will include Implications for revenue improvement and for traveler satisfaction around search, booking, and payment, and that's the exploitation of revenue opportunities, channel churn and its implications, and staying efficient on trip. So hopefully we'll cover, you know, most, most of these topics with a range of speakers. We do have 6, so let's hope that we can, that we can balance this through. But let me kick off with search. It's where travelers and bookers begin their journey, regardless of whether that is for leisure or for corporate travel, searching for flights. The current search models, are they, are they fit for purpose today and in fact in the future? Is there a new search model emerging that's based on the expectations and and the needs of users, and particularly from Gen Z. And the definition of Gen Z that we're using for today is those that were built— sorry, those that were born from 1990 onwards. So that would cover all 3 of my kids. So in terms of the questions that we want to pose and to ask here, will potential travelers bid their inquiry for potential providers to, quote, provide quotes and proposals in real time. Is that what millennials and Gen Z travelers are expecting from search today? How are these companies and other travel tech companies adjusting to their latest market demands and expectations? So I'm going to open with, with Johnny. Welcome for the umpteenth time, Johnny, to CAPA. Thanks for being here again.

Johnny Thorsen:Thank you.

Martin Warner:Let me start with you. Let's ask you what you see evolving and changing in the world of search.

Johnny Thorsen:So I think we are— we at the beginning of what I'm calling proactive search kind of appearing in the marketplace. And that basically means that an airline should recognize that if I have gone to Barcelona the last 5 years for the Mobile World Congress, I'm probably going again next year. So it might be a good idea to reach out to me and 2 months before and say, are you planning on going? Because here is your flight ready to buy. That would be proactive and great customer experience. We also seen the first chatbots, kind of communication robots that has the option for a human to intervene when the robot cannot figure it out itself. Because again, I don't need somebody to talk to, I need somebody to look at my data pattern, my history, my big data track. And we've seen the first examples of this evolving in the search space.

Martin Warner:Thanks, Johnny. Let me move to another John, John Jackson. Again, thanks for agreeing to be part of the panel this afternoon. In terms of search, what proportion of Korean's bookings today are attributed to metasearch, and what to what is emerging with Google Direct?

John Jackson:This may be surprising. We've got right now about 50% comes from either bookmarked or typing in Korean Air.

Martin Warner:Hmm.

John Jackson:I'd say 20%, 25% is coming from various Google platforms. The remaining 25% is pretty well dispersed. I don't think any one channel has more than 1 or 2%. We don't do a whole lot with metasearch right now.

Martin Warner:Right. Do you think that that will emerge for Korean, or do you think that you've really bypassed that?

John Jackson:It's something that could emerge for us. My concern with a lot of that is that we're not able to show our product features very well. And so we're more interested in working with, with companies and with, with other ways that allow us to do that, to display that. Yeah.

Martin Warner:And I guess what you see internationally and here, here in the United States would be very different to what you would see if you were looking at it from a domestic perspective. Right, right. Glenville, welcome. Thanks for joining us today. Perhaps you should kick off by telling us a little bit about MTT, given that you're, you're relatively new in this space. And then what do your customers and your prospects ask you, that what they want from your products and services today?

Glenville Morris:Yes, so we're called MTT, or Mobile Travel Technologies. We are the world's leading mobile travel specialist. We only do mobile travel, so we develop apps for leading travel companies like airlines and hotels and TMCs. We've been going about 10 years. We're based in Dublin, and also we've got an office in London. And we were acquired actually by Travelport last year, so we're kind of their mobile arm.

Martin Warner:That's the relatively new news.

Glenville Morris:Yes, that's the new piece.

Martin Warner:You have been around a long time.

Glenville Morris:Yes. And then what our customers are asking for— so I think it's really interesting. So mobile travel and technology, I think, is probably moving faster than it's ever moved before, and I think the landscape is constantly shifting. So you've got some of our customers now asking for more than just the kind of simple book flights and check-in app they would have asked for a couple of years ago. They're looking to innovate with mobile. They're looking to lead in their market, in their region. They're looking to utilize the latest developments in iOS and Android, and they're really looking to use mobile in a way to kind of transform that relationship with their customers using mobile as that tool.

Martin Warner:My only problem with mobile is that I've got to actually ask the passenger 3, 3 rows in front of me to actually hold the device so they can read it. But what are you seeing? Quite seriously, what are you seeing is the demand for the future in terms of mobile, given that actually with tablets, etc., you can actually get a pretty good, pretty good image?

Glenville Morris:Yeah, so for mobile, for us, we've seen customers going just a couple of years from like almost like a less than 1% figure on mobile being part of their revenue to over, over 10% in just a few years. And what we're now seeing is mobile not just being the kind of smartphone device that you carry around with you. What we're seeing is mobile as a complete cross-platform experience, so We're developing apps for smartwatches. We're developing apps for tablets. We're developing apps for mobile and smartphones. So I think we're seeing mobile becoming not just a channel that you need to think about, but becoming the dominant, almost primary channel that most travel brands should be looking at.

Martin Warner:Yeah, and what about apps for— not, not relating to booking, but to apps for payment, apps for airports, for example? Are you involved in that? And if so, how do you see that developing?

Glenville Morris:Yeah, so what I think what we're finding definitely with our airline customers, again from a few years ago when they were just interested in the kind of booking of a flight or checking in, what they're now interested in is a complete travel cycle, whether it be inspiration before booking, whether that be the booking itself and getting to the airport, the day of travel experience, the IFE experience, the in-flight entertainment, or even the destination. So what our airline apps are especially looking for is to become that kind of app of apps and provide that complete service.

Martin Warner:So consolidate down into one app rather than one of many.

Glenville Morris:Yes, I think there's a trend, you've probably heard of it, called FOMO, which is— you would have heard fear of missing out. Now you've got the fear of linking out. So I think it was the CEO of Uber that basically said, why would I send people outside my mobile experience to another brand or another experience? I think what we're finding with our airlines is they want to keep that user in that mobile experience. They don't want to push them to another brand or another experience.

Martin Warner:Understood. That makes complete sense from a marketing perspective to me. John, welcome from Amadeus. You've, of course, as an organization, been around a lot longer than 10 years. So you're, you're either being— you're either being disrupted or you're reinventing yourselves in what, in what you do. What do you see in here that is likely to evolve in this, focused on the search process?

John Dabkowski:Yeah, I think, I mean, I think on search, I'd agree with what Johnny and Glenville have said about the evolution of it, the fact that it's going to keep increasing. And I think with the personalization and the way that Johnny talked about it, the search will just go more and more and more. And sort of driving it into the IT solution, driving it into the cloud, cloud, the cloud is actually an IT solution that's matured and come along at just the right time. So as As search, you know, grows and grows and grows, as look-to-book ratios that we used to— we used to see of 10 to 1 become 1,000 to 1 or 10,000 to 1 or even more in the personalization world, the cloud-based solutions allow us to put the computing capacity where it needs to be, close to where the request is, allows us to scale it up very quickly. I mean, literally within minutes, and very cost-effective to handle the loads of special programs, special sales, special activities in search, and then scale it down to reduce costs during times of low load. So a great solution, you know, probably one of the, one of the few times when a great IT solution is not looking for a business problem to solve, is actually a real business problem, and it's a technology that's matured at just the right time to do that. And we've done some successful work. We did some work with Lufthansa, That got— that drove up close to 100% reliability for their cloud-based sessions. So it really seems to work these days.

Martin Warner:Absolutely. And are Amadeus today a disruptor, or are you a victim of disruption?

John Dabkowski:I would call us reinventing ourselves. I think Amadeus has actually done a really good job of diversification. I think reinventing ourselves, I guess one of the The most recent examples, very close to my heart personally, was the acquisition of Navitaire. Yeah, so a big acquisition, $800 million plus, took, took Amadeus from a very successful IT supplier to the full-cost, full-service carriers into now also being able to offer the right solution to the low-cost carriers and the hybrid carriers and the innovators who of course do a lot direct, who do a lot with their airline.com. And who have huge search loads directly on their own, on their own IT technology. So I think that's a, that's a great example of Amadeus reinventing itself, taking a bold decision with a, with a big acquisition to really address the bigger markets going.

Martin Warner:That's for sure.

John Dabkowski:Yeah, absolutely.

Martin Warner:And what are you seeing with the march of Google and Google Travel? I mean, I must admit, when I, when I search these days, you know, it's Google is popping up there straight away. First and foremost, right in my face.

Vicki Jaramillo:Yep.

John Dabkowski:No, and I think, I mean, Google's a, Google's a very dynamic company. It's a huge brand. It's one that we all go to. So clearly, clearly they're going to be a big player. I'm not 100% sure what their strategy is yet. You know, are they a super-duper metasearcher? Is that really what they're going to be? I mean, I think, I think it's still early.

Martin Warner:I think we've all been forecasting that Google would be big in travel, and all of a sudden it just seems to be there right in front. I know it says that it's, you know, that they're beta models, but once it's perfected, that's, that's going to change the game.

John Dabkowski:Yeah, yeah, no, they should— they can't be underestimated, that's for sure.

Glenville Morris:Yeah, I think what's interesting with Google is if you think back to about a year ago when kind of Google Now was kind of in its infancy, they really just had kind of boarding passes as cards and flight status cards. Now you've got complete itinerary management, you've got destination information, weather, currency at location, You've got the ability to book flights and hotels together. Obviously, rail's now coming into Google Flights. So for us, they're really the main people that are trying to plug that gap which I talked about a moment ago of the travel lifecycle, of every single part of that. They're trying to kind of put themselves in that gap between you and the passenger.

Martin Warner:It's certainly a very in-your-face alternative to the more traditional metasearch approaches of Kayak. And that was a big acquisition that Priceline made in and of itself. So it'll be interesting to see how they morph and deal with what is that, that now emerging huge competitor.

Johnny Thorsen:Yeah, you can also see, Martin, that Google are actually only one step away from providing a new universal profile. Google now is capturing everything we do. If you use Google Waze, they know a lot about you. They have so many data points, and behind the scenes, I think they're actually getting ready to create some kind of a basic profile.

Martin Warner:And I wish that one standard profile existed. Yeah, you know, I'm not sure that everybody in this room must have at least a dozen individual profiles with airlines, with hotel groups. So, you know, here comes the day where one will capture everything, I hope. Johnny, what more would you predict for the future in terms of in terms of search? I mean, we've touched there on, on universal profile. What else do you see emerging, and what do you, what do you see our kids, those Gen Z folks, wanting and expecting in the future?

Johnny Thorsen:So I think, and I have a long background on the corporate travel technology side before coming over to SAP Mobile recently, but the ability to say I want to go somewhere and basically issue a mini RFP as a corporate traveler, and then a number of sites will respond to that. A marketplace that goes in my favor rather than me having to spend the time on searching all these places. Why? At the end of the day, it's about the data underneath, and my profile will give the search engines the ability to respond to my IP.

Martin Warner:And also, of course, with cookies, to then more adequately prompt that if you're going to go skiing every January, then somebody should be making that offer as early as, as early as possible to personalize that offer and that opportunity.

Johnny Thorsen:And I mean, last week there's a new startup called Panna, which is kind of doing a chatbot search. And it took me 5 seconds to write an SMS, flights from San Francisco to Copenhagen, and a minute later I had 4 options. I didn't have to do anything. It just arrived back in my hand.

Glenville Morris:Yeah, I think this, this rise of the chatbots, you mentioned, there's the 2 biggest trends we're seeing is that rise of the mix of AI and human, whether that be people like Panna or FlightFox or Haptic. The second rise that we'd probably see is, is voice, and Google have been talking about that for years. And you've got people like Skyscanner who've released their Amazon Echo app where you can talk to Alexa, which is an AI, and literally say, give me searches for Edinburgh to London, and it will start to speak to you without a mobile being involved. So that's a— that's gonna be a really interesting trend over the next couple of years to watch.

Martin Warner:Yeah, and she's usually more accurate than the real Alexa. Search hopefully leads to booking and paying, and we certainly look at the whole process will lead from, from search onwards to booking, but then of course to payment and settlement and to managing the travel Or the transaction once it's been initiated and booked. And there comes the opportunity, of course, then after the trip has been booked and the payment has been processed, managing an itinerary, sharing it with third-party data aggregators, particularly from a safety and security perspective and a duty of care perspective from a corporate travel standpoint, as well, of course, as sharing information with friends and family. whether that's for leisure travel purposes or for corporate travel purposes, is important. But once that initial booking has been made, there is this enormous opportunity to exploit or to put the hand into the pocket of the traveler and to extract more revenue and therefore process more and more payments. Johnny, let me come back to you first of all in terms of, you know, the description of that part of the session and the ability for airlines to farm, whether that is additional efficiency or additional profitability opportunities from, from that, from that passenger. And again, using mobile products that are on offer, what's your, what's your experience? And, you know, can we perhaps come back to that theme of personalization?

Johnny Thorsen:So there's no doubt this is where The ownership of the data will be the key question here. In my mind as a traveler, I would like to decide who can see my data and make use of them and for what purposes. On the other side, the supplier or the channel I book through, they believe they have a right to mine my data and hit me with anything they want. And I think we, we haven't seen a solution yet that manages that balance. It's probably going to be a new player that will come up with a solution.

Martin Warner:Yeah, I think we hear a lot about the opportunity for personalization, but I think that what we still see is, is, is still a one-to-many hit-and-hope type approach to marketing. And it does surprise me that we're not, we're not more, we're not closer to that true personalization of understanding what the traveler is doing and then prompting it to an individual the right opportunities for them to purchase other, other things.

Johnny Thorsen:I— you heard it before, Martin, but about 2 months ago I had a surprise moment on a domestic flight in the US from San Francisco to New York. When I had ordered a sandwich and a drink, the cabin crew member basically looked at the point-of-sale terminal and said, ah, you are a member at this level, you don't have to pay. So after all these years, it looks like it's finally moving into the point-of-sale environment who I am. And what my status and level of importance to the airline is. And that was a very nice surprise.

Martin Warner:Let me, let me bring Rachel in here. We've heard from the, we've heard from the guys for too long. Rachel, thanks for joining us. At UATP, of course, you're involved in the initial booking process as payment initiates, but what are you seeing in terms of what are you doing that's helping airlines to optimize that revenue, that revenue opportunity. Tell us a little bit about that.

Rachel Morowitz:Well, you know, the payment space in general has really been evolving a lot. I mean, you see over 300 different forms of alternative payment that have sprung up other than credit cards around the world. And so the role of payments has really become to continue that seamlessness for the consumer. You know, just as a traveler wants to be able to check in easily, They also want to be able to pay seamlessly. So what we really try to do at UATP in terms of the seamlessness and the revenue optimization is, you know, we're a corporate card. We're a corporate card product that's owned by the airlines. So we're already the low-cost alternative. So in that sense, we're already optimizing revenue. But we really look to ways that we can improve our product and deliver a superior travel product. And mainly that's through partnerships. And that's both on the consumer and the corporate and the consumer side. So on the corporate side, you know, we, we have a recent partnership with a company called WEX to issue virtual cards because the UATP card is for airline travel. And then through the use of virtual cards, you know, we can get into other merchant categories. But it's really being able to bring this innovation of the virtual card to the airline space to create a superior product. And, you know, we do that on the consumer side too.

Martin Warner:Yeah.

Rachel Morowitz:Many of you have probably heard of PayPal, Alipay as the big alternative forms of payment, but as I said, there's hundreds around the globe. And so really helping the airlines understand that, you know, there's Giropay in Germany, there's SafetyPay in Latin America. Through these partnerships that we've built at UATP, allowing these forms of payment to ride on our network, it's really helping the airlines, you know, 2 ways. You're, you're maximizing the effectiveness of a network that you already have in place, so that keeps your costs down. But you're also maximizing the revenue opportunities because you're reaching those consumers around the globe and you're saying, hey, we're going to let you pay how you want to pay. So once again, it's making it seamless for that consumer.

Martin Warner:And what are the other features that you would— that you would have there? There's obviously improved security, lower cost, of acceptance, and also I think less friction in the transaction. What are those points really mean?

Rachel Morowitz:Yeah, well, you know, on the corporate side for us, you know, the reason we chose to partner with a virtual card that could be done at the same time as booking is, you know, you maintain everything that you already have with your corporate brand. You know, because we're a lodged card and that's reduced fraud, now that the virtual card can be done at the same time and you can keep keep that low fraud rate, but then you're also able to capture all the data at the time of booking. You know, as Johnny was mentioning earlier, data being very important. It's like being able to keep all those aspects of your trusted corporate brand but bring in this innovation is really key as well. And I think on the consumer side, a lot of the alternative forms of payment, they address these issues. I mean, I know I'm not— one of our partners is actually Bitnet. I know a lot of, you know, industries and the airline industry are maybe hesitant to accept Bitcoin, but, you know, one of the things that it does address is No chargebacks. It's just like cash. So, you know, a lot of these forms of payment that have sprung up, it's to address those consumer needs.

Martin Warner:There is absolutely— using that BitNet example, there's no need to decline the transaction.

Rachel Morowitz:Exactly.

Martin Warner:Because there's no risk.

Rachel Morowitz:Exactly. And then BitNet is taking on any risk of, you know, the Bitcoin transaction through the Bitcoin network.

Martin Warner:Do you think that the opportunity to lower cost in this area, as well as maximize revenue is fully understood across the, across the industry, or is it still a matter of education?

Rachel Morowitz:I mean, it's definitely still a matter of education. You know, obviously, you know, airlines are in business to fly planes, so that's where we kind of see ourselves because we are in the payment space. And while yes, we are a corporate card, you know, we're constantly innovating as well. We're owned by the airlines, so we want to, we want to create products for them and bring education to them that helps them understand the payment space, and so it's great to be able to do it on both the corporate and the consumer side.

Martin Warner:Thanks, Rachel. John, what are you— what are you and Amadeus seeing in the area of payment? How deep is the integration of payment, of some of these new payment opportunities?

John Dabkowski:So I think, I think, I think it's going to have to evolve. I mean, I think the more merchandising and personalization we do The more times we will try and interact with the passengers, the airlines will try and interact with the passengers through the selling process before departure multiple times, and there's airlines that are doing that quite well today, during the travel at the airport and all those sort of things. So, and every one of those interactions, they'll try and sell them something, right? Ancillaries, whatever. It's going to be—

Glenville Morris:Right.

John Dabkowski:It's going to be huge. It's going to continue to grow. The more sophisticated the personalization becomes, the more effective that ancillary revenue is going to be, or that merchandising is going to be. And every one of those needs payment, right? Needs reliable payment, needs easy payment, needs the whole personalization of the payment process as well, such that it just becomes seamless, right? And I think to some of the earlier points, I think whilst travel is not yet very good at this personalization, identifying who we are and how we do it— actually, I think Amazon is probably the leader, right, outside travel.

Johnny Thorsen:Mm-hmm.

John Dabkowski:and amazing at identifying us before we even log into our accounts. They can spot you on a different computer in a different country and ask you, and even ask you, and they've asked me, do you want to use your Spanish credit card or a US credit card or your UK debit card for the transaction? So I think Amazon is probably leading the way there.

Martin Warner:My dad's credit card.

John Dabkowski:Yeah, well, we'll find one that works, right? It's like, so payment and personalization associated with payment. And making it easy and seamless is going to be key to achieving the ancillary revenues that the airlines are looking to achieve.

Martin Warner:And John Jackson, I've saved the view of the airline on this particular topic until, until now to give you the chance to listen to what others are saying. But what are you, what are you seeing, whether it's a direct or an indirect booking? You know, for example, at what point in the transaction are you trying to upsell and sell And opportunities for ancillary revenue, whether that's the unbundling of the, of the product and it being seats and bags or meals. What else are you selling or trying to sell to your passengers once you've got them initially engaged?

John Jackson:Well, I've got to admit that when it comes to this, we're probably still a bit head in the sand on all this. We're pulling it out though. And there's a number of things that we think we can do. Our fare products are all-inclusive for the most part, so we don't do a lot in terms of seat assignments, meals, all of that. What we do do though is, you know, mainly through our loyalty program right now, we'll let people pay for lounge access and for excess baggage and We've got a limo service, limo bus service in Seoul. We want to use it more than we are to find the right people to use our branded credit card, things like that. But I think a lot of what we talked about here, there's a lot that we can do. And we're not to the point yet, I think, where we do a very good job at one-to-one. We do the one-to-many fairly well. But as we get in more of the one-to-one, I think the important thing for us to remember is, you know, we've got to put ourselves in our customers' shoes and find out what it is that's going to work. And I've got 2 examples of this from major companies just in the last 2 weeks, personal experiences, where I bought an air ticket, returned from the trip, and I get an email, a survey that basically just asked me if I would recommend to a friend that they fly this particular airline. I mean, couldn't be a bigger waste of my time than opening this email up, right?

Johnny Thorsen:Right.

John Jackson:And then I get another one inviting me to be part of this promotion where I can stay at this hotel property and, you know, get 1,500 points or whatever if I do it by the end of April. You click on the link to register and then it tells me, sorry, you're not eligible for Now, there's 2 examples of actually having the reverse effect than— Right.

Martin Warner:Than what it was actually intended. And I do think that, you know, within certain organizations, I think it's a little bit like when we check into a hotel and we get frustrated that we've actually got to get underneath the desk to actually then put, you know, plug the computer in the socket. Clearly, the room was never designed by somebody who was a frequent traveller. So I think that, you know, we're only limited by the ability of people to actually put themselves into the mind or into the headspace of the traveller. And that's when the one-to-many versus the one-to-one personalization becomes important.

John Jackson:Conversely, what I want as a customer of an airline is if I'm travelling and say I'm a small business owner and I've flown flown, let's just say, to Seoul 3 times in the last year, all in business class, and then the 4th time I fly in economy class, maybe because I'm trying to save money or whatever, I'd want somebody at that airline to recognize that I'm a loyal business class flyer and give me some sort of incentive, you know, whether it's, you know, price or, you know, just utilizing mileage or whatever to get myself back up into business.

Martin Warner:Right.

John Jackson:And that's the kind of One-on-one that I would like to see.

John Dabkowski:Some airlines are approaching that. I remember one shopping experience, actually to fly down to Australia on vacation, just to pick up on Peter's focusing on Australia this morning. And I'm doing queries trying to find business class fares, because I'm paying. And so I then do a query for premium economy, one query for premium economy. Immediately, the next time it came back, a slightly reduced business class fare. Same query. Same airline, same O&D, same trip. So they— somebody seemed to have noticed that I was thinking about opting out of business class and going premium economy, so they sweetened the deal a little bit on business class. Still much more than the premium economy, just enough for me to say, all right, I'll buy it. So some folks are starting to do it.

Martin Warner:Thanks, John. Um, let me perhaps change perspective, and let's— Vicki, I'm going to bring you in here and ask you some questions about about the role of the airport, because I think that from my perspective, the role of the airport and what I expect at or from an airport, I think, has changed over, over time. At Orlando International, what have you, what have you seen in terms of expectations from the customer that have, that have changed? And this is, this is obviously relating to the buy and how they spend their money whilst they're, whilst they're with you.

Vicki Jaramillo:Well, one of the things that we've actually One of the things that we've done at the airport is I know a lot of airports do have apps, and we put in an app about a year and a half ago, but it— the reason it took us a while to roll it out is because we had Blue-Fi on it, which, if you're not familiar with Blue-Fi, I mean, we have 1,200 beacons deployed throughout the airport and on the air sides, and we're putting another 1,000 into the garages. So if I'm at the ticket counter and I want to know how to get to Starbucks, it will take me step by step. So that's one of the things that we've done. And we also have a large bandwidth on our Wi-Fi, Because obviously when people are travelling overseas, what do they do? They turn off their roaming. So it's great if you have an app, but if nobody's using it— so obviously if you have the free Wi-Fi, and then you've got that.

John Jackson:I agree.

Vicki Jaramillo:And we obviously have it in multiple languages as well. So that's one of the things. We haven't gone to the point yet of pushing out as far as walking by a store and it notifies you, because there's that mix, or that how much is too much? And we want them to have a good passenger experience in our airport, but we will be trying this summer just with duty-free to see how it goes with the app and to see if we can measure it to see if it's worth doing, and then obviously be able to work with the rest of the concessionaires if this is something that they want to do. But, you know, like most people, well, at least myself, I turn off push notifications because there's so many that come in. So, What's to make it different that if they're in an airport, they're also not, you know, they're probably turning off their push notifications. So we're going to see how it does. I know that there's revenue involved opportunities, but we also want to balance it. We're very similar to Vegas in the sense that we're the D airport, you know, the O and D.

Glenville Morris:Yeah.

Vicki Jaramillo:That's— so that's very different from an Atlanta or Chicago or Houston because they're connection airports. So the dwell time for our passengers is longer. So they may be there sometimes, they're there 2 or 3 hours ahead of time. So yes, being connected is very, very important to them. And so again, it's just finding that balance of what's too much for them.

Martin Warner:I couldn't agree with you more, and that's from personal experience, that when you've got these push notifications turned on, if I don't go to McDonald's outside of an airport, what would make me go to McDonald's just because I'm in an airport? So it's about pushing— and my apologies to McDonald's But it's all about pushing something that's relevant. And that's back to that personalization opportunity. I still think that a lot of what we do see pushed is a general, what I would call hit and hope type of experience. And therefore, some of us, as you've just said, actually turn off that push notification because we don't want to be bombarded with things that are not relevant to us.

Vicki Jaramillo:And one of the things that we've done, which has nothing so much to do with technology, but across the United States, The lines for security are increasing, and TSA has already said expect a very rough summer. Buckle your seatbelts, it's going to be rough. So on our busiest days, from Thursday to Sunday, we actually have entertainment to keep the people that are standing in line, you know, keep their mind off of it. Yes, they're playing on their devices, but they might be listening to reggae, or they might be listening to jazz music, or something of that sort, just to kind of enhance the customer experience. So it's not as technical.

Martin Warner:It's not elevator music, right? That was what you promised me earlier.

Johnny Thorsen:So, Vicki, can I ask you, when you have BlueFi rolled out, are you recognizing me when I come back over and over? Have you taken that step so you start—

Vicki Jaramillo:We're working towards that. One of the things that the BlueFi has done with the— it's being done with CETA is the BlueFi, the other cameras, and the Wi-Fi is to triangulate in order for us to measure the lines for security, because sometimes they can be very deceiving and they can look like they're, you know, they could be 40 minutes, but really they're only 15. So using that technology, we're triangulating to measure exactly, because people feel like they've got to get in line, and our concessions are— more of them are before security. So we want to make sure that they're spending more time until they need to get to the line.

Martin Warner:So, and how— I'm gonna put you on the spot here because this wasn't part of the preparation, but how do you communicate the benefits of beacons and and that kind of technology. How do you let people know how that's benefiting their trip experience? What are you telling your, your passengers that are coming through the airport, or are they just blissfully unaware?

Vicki Jaramillo:Well, I don't know if people at what other airports have Blue-Fi and be able to have that step-by-step navigation. And so I don't know if they come to expect that this is the way it should be at other airports, that they have that step-by-step navigation. One of the other things too that we will be launching on May 18th, that I know of, we're the first U.S. airport to launch an HD radio station.

Rachel Morowitz:Mm-hmm.

Vicki Jaramillo:So that'll be coming out on May 18th. It's Fly MCO 105.1 FD2. And since we are the largest rental car market in the world, our rental car partners will have it programmed so that when you get into the car, you will have that radio station on there. So it will be not elevator music, because we've studied the The demographics of our travellers as to what kind of genre of music, and then the programming, because if you travel to a place and you get into a rental car, I don't know about you, but I'm always pushing the buttons to find something. So the plan is that the radios—

Martin Warner:You have it preprogrammed.

Vicki Jaramillo:It will be preprogrammed to the station. So we'll be giving them updates on what's going on in Central Florida. For the first month, we will not allow any advertising, because we really want it just to take off. And then after that, yes, we will start to have advertising on there.

Martin Warner:I must say, I think that's a terrific idea, and I hope that others will follow your lead.

Vicki Jaramillo:And you'll be able to stream it as well, so yeah.

Martin Warner:Yeah, yeah, very good. Thanks, Vicki. Let me try and catch up on where I am, because I've started jotting about here. Perhaps, John, Johnny, we should perhaps come back to the topic of itinerary management and the purpose of which itinerary data is used. Johnny, you spent a lot of time like I did in corporate— in the corporate travel world. How important— I don't think we could perhaps understate the importance of quality, timely, now data.

Johnny Thorsen:So the raw itinerary data play an incredibly important role in the corporate travel space because of the duty of care angle that of course is becoming ever more important out there. And it's still fascinating how hard it is to get hands-on good quality data that are automatically updated. There's a lot of very old technology solutions running to try and capture these data.

Martin Warner:I mean, I had a horror story just last week, 10 days ago, in the, in the immediate aftermath of of the Brussels bombings, that a relatively small company based here in the United States had happened to have 41 people in Brussels at the time, and it took them nearly 36 hours to connect with each of those 41 people to make sure that they weren't negatively impacted.

Vicki Jaramillo:Yeah.

Martin Warner:And the, the reason for that was that they'd actually allowed Multiple booking channels. They'd particularly— once they'd gone beyond there, the travel agency, the TMC of record, had not been the mandated booking channel for the hotels. So over 70% of those travelers had actually gone off and booked their own hotels and had not brought back that data to any form of central source.

Glenville Morris:Any—

Martin Warner:any facility of care nightmare.

Johnny Thorsen:Yeah, I mean, if you think about airlines, right, we're getting endless emails despite nobody probably reads those emails because we all have the information in an app that we need. Imagine if an airline would offer an XML handoff, standard XML. Here you go, I will give you any dataset that reflects your latest booking with me. If my booking is changed in the airport, I get a new XML handoff. That would solve so many problems in smart usage of our itinerary data, and it's at a very, very low cost. But it's not happening. Everyone is looking at this data as it's my gold, and we could get a lot of innovation data as of anyway.

Martin Warner:But to be perfectly honest, I would want that data to be used in a smart way that would enable my employer to be able to track me.

Johnny Thorsen:You would open an endless army of innovation on top of this data if they became easily available. Today you have to fight your way through layers of Absolutely.

Martin Warner:John, do you want to add anything to that?

John Dabkowski:It's actually a key point, and I think at Amadeus we have 8,000— I think 8,000 corporate accounts booking on that, and that's the key. I mean, I used to work for a management consulting company, 300,000+ employees, all traveling all the time, and driving the discipline of knowing where everybody is, and when incidents like that happen, being able to contact them is absolutely critical. Absolutely key and drives the discipline. But it's got to— you've got to catch all the channels, right? And all the bookings. And what you then need, in the way that Johnny was talking about, was, was the tools or the interface to make it easy. Because if it's not easy, it's not going to happen. You're not going to catch all the channels. And mandating it, even with the best discipline in the world, not everyone's going to use the one channel that you want them to use. And so the technology to enable that is absolutely key. Absolutely key.

Martin Warner:Absolutely. Absolutely.

Johnny Thorsen:But Martin, to the point of, you know, the duty of care environment, we're seeing the first wave of technology that just goes straight to the mobile device, right? Because it's actually easier to find out where you are when you go to the device. Itinerary data will only put you into an airport. A hotel will put you where you sleep, but during the day you're probably not in the hotel. So the corporate security departments are now aggressively looking into what technology can I make advantage of? Absolutely. When the alarm goes, it goes way beyond the travel department, that's for sure.

Martin Warner:Glenville, anything that you want to add from an MTT experience point of view? What do you— what are you seeing customers demanding in terms of data?

Glenville Morris:So I think it's interesting to think about the duty of care stuff. So outside of what TMCs have delivered over the last couple years, which is a basic itinerary management tool, they are looking at mobile as a tool to know exactly where their travelers are, being able to communicate with them in real time. in situations like Brussels and other situations like storms in America. So what they're now looking at is outside of itinerary management, they're looking at whether they can do flight and hotel booking because they're looking to give more autonomy back to their kind of business travelers because they're expecting—

Martin Warner:And what value can you actually add back?

Glenville Morris:Yeah, because they're looking for a solution that's not inferior just because it's a business app. They want it— they want the same experience they're getting from their consumer apps in their business travel apps. So they're looking for flight and hotel booking, whether that's inside or outside of policy. They're looking for email passing, just being able to kind of forward emails that you do book outside of policy. They're looking for the duty of care stuff. They're looking for at-destination information. So I think it's gone beyond a simple itinerary management app of, again, a couple of years ago. They're looking for a complete travel experience.

Martin Warner:Absolutely. And, and I shouldn't be cynical, but I am. But of course, you know, what a great excuse to use the duty of care responsibility and the traveller tracking and security as an opportunity to sell more. Yeah, you know, it really is a great opportunity for us to see more transactions, more payments, more passengers, and to actually be able to direct more sales messages that could actually grow non-traditional revenues.

Glenville Morris:And what we're finding as well, they're using mobile to almost communicate with that traveller to almost stay-in policy sometimes. So if they see that they're kind of looking to— or they have booked hotels outside of policy, they might use push to say, actually, there's some hotels in this area and they're all inside this corporate policy. So they're using it as a tool to almost guide their travelers as well.

Martin Warner:Thanks, Glenville. I'm going to turn to our 3rd section of this, of this subject, and that is channel churn, and cover what are the implications for airlines and as the cost of distribution and revenue model, that the whole yield opportunity changes as more people move to metasearch for search and mobile booking. Clearly, the mix of distribution by channel continues to change. John, I think, you know, Korean— and we're talking from the US, of course— you've got a very distinct profile of booking channel. And of course, that channel That channel variability is very different by airline. What about distribution and the, the different channels of distribution that are available to airlines? Do you think that airlines are looking— I'm going to address this to you first of all— do you think that airlines are looking at distribution and individual channels channels in an isolated fashion, or do you really think that there is a bigger picture in the whole distribution and channel of distribution discussion?

John Jackson:I think I'm going to take the easy answer and say both.

Martin Warner:And I'll give you an example.

John Jackson:You know, where we're looking at just as a particular channel, you know, obviously we're greatly concerned about the distribution costs. So that's one concern of ours. As far as the bigger picture, you know, I've said it a few times today, you know, we don't want our product commoditized, and so we want to find channels that help us to avoid that. And of course, the best one for us is us, but there's others out there, and those are the ones we identify and that we make sure that we spend more time on.

Martin Warner:With the very public One, of course, last year was Lufthansa's change in the way that it passed through its cost of distribution from the GDS. And I know, John, I'm not going to take you two directly to that discussion because I know that that's still— the jury's still out. But did Lufthansa look at that as a bigger picture, or was it something that you think they focused on which was just about getting down the cost of distribution, or at least ameliorating the cost. And let me take it to the 2 Johns on the end for that one. This is easy because all I've got to say, John, over to you.

John Dabkowski:Do you want to go first?

Martin Warner:I'll let you go first.

John Dabkowski:I mean, that's fine. I mean, I would say, does it represent a big change? I don't know. I think the results Are still out. The jury's still out.

John Jackson:Right.

John Dabkowski:Will other airlines follow? I don't know. I haven't seen a lot of evidence of that, frankly. What I have seen direct evidence of is lots of airlines continuing to sign, you know, full content agreements with us. It's happening all around the world. Middle East, big airlines in the Middle East, Etihad, for example. In North America, Air Canada just signed a full content agreement with us for normal distribution without any of the Lufthansa kinds of things. Down in Australia, Virgin Australia just signed one. So those sorts of things are continuing pretty normally. The other thing that's continuing and in fact accelerating is the low-cost carriers either joining or rejoining the GDSs in the normal distribution model kind of way. And I guess the ultimate, you know, the ultimate test is Ryanair signing up for back signing up for the GDSs again, right?

Martin Warner:And I know from your position you would say this goes beyond the cost of distribution. The different channels of distribution that are available today is all about growing the business and growing the pie.

John Dabkowski:And I would say, I would say frankly, I think, I think the traveller should be at the center of the travel industry. I think, I think that's what we'll leave. I think what, I think what they want to see is Transparency, consistency across all the channels. And I think as an industry, all of us should be committed to providing that connectivity and doing, and doing that integration. And I think at Amadeus we do. We do it in the GDS business. I mean, we also have 110, 115 airline customers for airline.com where we supply their direct channel. We now have 45 low-cost carriers where the direct channel is their most important channel. They're signing up for GDSs as well, but we're there. We do think the GDS still remains a very effective channel.

Martin Warner:And that's about your, your topic earlier about diversification of the business.

John Dabkowski:Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Martin Warner:That you're not reliant on a single channel.

John Dabkowski:But the GDS, the GDS business is still, I think, an efficient channel. It is still, I believe, a cost-effective channel. I do believe it delivers high-quality bookings to the airlines. I mean, If you look at the data, about 2/3 of the bookings that come from the travel agents are premium bookings in some way, shape, or form. It's premium economy, it's business class, or it's first class. If you look at the average yield of the bookings coming from the travel agencies, they tend to be higher. Some cases 20%, 30%, 40% higher than the bookings coming from airline.com. So there is—

Martin Warner:And this is where I think I was a little bit surprised that Lufthansa did, you know, almost a carte blanche across the board. board, that indirect distribution, instead of picking perhaps some of the lower-yielding areas first. John, anything to add to that from a Korean perspective? I do know your profile is very unique.

John Jackson:What I will add is that, you know, we just switched over to Amadeus 18 months ago, something like that, and, and, and frankly, it has allowed us to do some things in terms of sales and in terms of personalization and customer targeting and management and that sort of thing that we couldn't do before. So we see both. You know, my main point was— and maybe it would have been better said like you, like you said it— you know, when you look at some of these lower-yielding channels, you know, you got to do something about it.

Martin Warner:Absolutely.

Johnny Thorsen:So There is one interesting angle on the innovation that Lufthansa is trying to enable, because I think we haven't seen what they're going to do. But just imagine if they wanted to sell tickets in bitcoins. They can now do that via their new channel without relying on anyone else. It's their decision, and they decide the parameters for when it's a Bitcoin ticket or not.

Martin Warner:So this is Bitcoin powered by UATP, of course.

Rachel Morowitz:Well, I mean, tying this issue back to the The data as well. You know, if it's, it's, if it's for strategic reasons in addition to the cost and revenue reasons, if it is really to collect data and have them go through your own distribution channels so that you can then tailor the products to them. I don't know if that's, you know, we're at that point yet, but we know that's very important at UATP as well because the airlines own that data. So for airlines owning the data, that's really important. Then what you do with it is the next step.

Martin Warner:Absolutely. And those that And those that become proficient with what to do with that data will be the big winners.

Vicki Jaramillo:Yeah.

Martin Warner:That's for sure. Johnny, let me, though, pick your brains a little bit more about, you know, forecasting the future and what we might see in terms of distribution changes. You know, I think a lot of people have been perhaps unfairly critical of Lufthansa, but they moved first. And often when you move first, you do get opened up for criticism. And that people hope you fail. But I think the debate moved on, and I think the, I think the debate is a much more mature discussion around, you know, looking at individual yielding areas of the business, as John, as John has just said. What do you think will come next in that, in that, in that future?

Johnny Thorsen:Well, I think travel has one unique kind of a framework compared to a lot of other industries that have been disrupted over the last few years, right? It's still highly politically regulated, as we heard earlier today. Market by market, there are conditions that you cannot overcome, but the sharing economy trend and the kind of disruptive technology will accelerate. I personally think we will see a virtual airline. Somebody will sell seats without operating planes at all because it's hard business.

Martin Warner:I think in all of the years, almost 20 years that we've known each other, you've always been pretty good at forecasting the future, and many of the things that you talked about eventually have come true. Not necessarily in 2 years, but I think you've now been talking about virtual airline for about 5 years, I think. Well, I mean, how close are we?

Johnny Thorsen:Last year was the first time where it became real, and I know 2 airlines are actually looking at how to get rid of those unsold seats on terms that don't destroy yield management. That's, that's the key, but it's so easy to do it now with the QR code in the hand. You can be hanging around at the airport and waiting for a last-minute seat to be released under a different brand.

Martin Warner:And you certainly then take a look at what we've seen in lodging with Airbnb and HomeAway, and what we've seen with Uber. You know, these are now 2 of the biggest organizations in the world, and neither of them either own a car or own a bedroom.

Johnny Thorsen:Yeah, one other very interesting fact In fact, and apologies for kind of looking into the SAP Mobile world, but we've just launched a new technology that allows you to kind of follow a group of people's movement by handset. Nobody is individualized. You don't know who it is. You can see a group of people. And this was used during the Super Bowl recently down in San Francisco. So on the day of the match, we were able to actually say where everyone who was inside the stadium came from. Where did they start their day? I.e., how long was their journey? 7% of the people in the stadium were from Colorado. Stuff like that is now becoming available as a new dataset, and that will change how you think as an airport operator. Where do my people start from, and what do I know about them, and how can I use that?

Martin Warner:And I think the hardest thing that we have to deal with, and all the folks in this room, whether we're in aviation or we're in airports and infrastructure is that we don't have the luxury of starting with a blank sheet of paper. So we've got to actually shift with the times and still, still operate the airline whilst we find something that's, something that's new and that might be better. Whereas Uber and Airbnb were able to come into, into the market with something completely new. They didn't start with the legacy that we all have to live with in this, in this room. Let me move on to the 4th and the last topic of this, of this session, and that is staying efficient on trip. The availability of low-cost beacons— and I actually hadn't appreciated just how many that you deployed at Orlando International. That is quite staggering. But the availability of low-cost beacons is already starting to be evident in certain airports, clearly, and improving the trip experiences for travelers as well as improving knowledge for airlines that reduce cost. What is the reality, though, of what's, of what's available today, and how is this a win-win-win opportunity for the travelers, the airports, and the airlines? Vicki, do you want to expand a little bit more about what you're, what you're doing with Waypoints and effectively enabling travelers?

Vicki Jaramillo:Well, first let me also say that airports in many cases are reactive because You know, we get feedback whether it's social media, via our websites, and you know, you don't hear so much about the positives. You hear the negatives, what was wrong. So what is the thing that most people do? The first thing get off an airplane, they go to the restroom. So we got a lot of negatives about our restrooms. So we corrected them. We have more restrooms. They're cleaner. So again, in many cases, airports to a certain degree using the technology, but we're reactive. So we're trying to do what the customer wants. You know, does the customer want more organic food? Do they want more gluten-free? So we're getting input from that and then working with our concessionaires in order to provide those things. So, you know, it's again, airports sometimes are more reactive. We don't have the access to the passenger data. We know that we are— the passenger are the airline's customers and they're our customers as well. We're providing hopefully a seamless, safe experience for them and we're trying to provide all the accoutrements that will make their trip as seamless as possible, providing that Wi-Fi, providing those things for them, providing, you know, like I said, security lines that are hopefully decent amount and having a good experience. But it is working with the airlines, you know, many cases, you know, again, like Vegas, we're a very large convention market. We had 62 million visitors last year and we have a very large convention market as well. We work with our convention center and the airlines to to let them know Microsoft's bringing in 30,000 people so that we need to make sure that there are enough taxis because that's a taxi group or an Uber group. Or if it's McDonald's Corporation, or is it the, the World of Concrete with 80,000 people? So we have to go back to the old-fashioned communication with the airlines to let them know that what's happening.

Martin Warner:There is a place for it still, that old-fashioned picking up the phone kind of, kind of communication. But I, I must say, I think that You know, some of the experiences and some of the stories that we now hear, that they should be much more trumpeted and much more communicated as to what they— what is changing in our airports and how is that benefiting.

Vicki Jaramillo:A lot of people don't see what's happening as far as behind the scenes with what's happening with all the beacons. And the— you know, we have right now 80 kiosks that you can do self-check-in, you can self-bag tag, whether it's the regular bag tag or the RFID that, you know, that Delta's doing. We're adding another Another 80 of those, you know, check-in kiosks. So those are the things that are taking place. Customer doesn't realize it. We just look at it as opportunity for more customer service.

Martin Warner:Right, absolutely. I mean, some of us in this room, I think, heard recently a fantastic story from Auckland Airport around a partnership of Auckland Airport with Air New Zealand, which I think is one of the most innovative legacy carriers in the world. And I thought it was a terrific story, so I'll repeat it here. And that was where the use of beacons that had been deployed at Auckland Airport— once the traveller who was a member of Air New Zealand's frequent flyer program, Koru Club, that when they triggered a beacon as they passed through security, it automatically read their Koru Club profile, sent a message to the lounge that the passenger was within 5 minutes of arriving at the lounge, and by the time he arrived or she arrived at the lounge, their beverage of choice, a flat white in this case, was ready to be handed to them as they walked into the lounge. Now, for me, on a Monday morning, that would put a smile on my, on my face at 6:00 a.m., and I think that that's just a terrific— might be a small example, but I think it's a terrific example of—

Vicki Jaramillo:Terrific example. He asked the question earlier, and that's what we'd like to get to.

Martin Warner:Absolutely. So Rachel, let me come back to you and, and UATP. What are your experience in helping airlines to improve frictionless sales, and what are you doing that, that helps the traveler on trip minimize their disruption, literally, from, from a payments perspective?

Rachel Morowitz:Well, you know, once again, this is mainly through the use of our partnerships and being able to maximize the use of a network that the airlines already have and own. that we already run for them. So, you know, we partner with a lot of gift card companies. One of our most recent partnerships with Givex, you know, they're more technology firms, so they have the capability for the airline to, you know, issue on-the-spot gift cards for passengers if there's delay or cancellation and generate revenue in that way. And then they can also be used on board running over the UATP network. So once again, there's no cost there because it's running over the UATP network.

Martin Warner:Yeah.

Rachel Morowitz:and then they're also being able to use it on board. So, you know, that's, that's one example.

Martin Warner:It also means, of course, that if it's time-limited, it can't then be taken away and used for something else, for another purpose to which it wasn't intended. So it's actually redirected for reinvestment back into the business.

Rachel Morowitz:And those can be used, you know, on the consumer and corporate side. I mean, if you want to reward a corporate traveler, you can do that as well.

Martin Warner:Good, good. Um, John Jackson, from a Korean point of view, what have you seen at airports, or what are you hoping to see at airports that would help you improve your passenger experience?

John Jackson:We haven't seen a whole lot in terms of what we've discussed here yet. We have been talking to, for example, our credit card network about using some of these things to send offers to our customers when they're in airports. That's more of the one of many. What I'd really like to see though, and I'll give you an example, is, you know, Incheon Airport, great connecting airport.

Martin Warner:Yep.

John Jackson:If you don't have a 45-minute connection, if it's more along 4 hours, 5 hours— I think Peter flew us here from Australia, might, might be our first Australia to Las Vegas passenger ever.

Martin Warner:Probably.

John Jackson:But had a lengthy, lengthy layover there. It'd be great if, you know, a system could go come in and read your calendar and see that you've got a layover and start offering you some of these things based on the length of time that you're going to be staying in the airport.

Martin Warner:We're certainly no longer limited by what we aspire towards. We're now limited by the amount of investment we can actually put in. to enable— to take advantage of the technologies that are now available. You know, I think that that's quite a remarkable shift. Instead of saying, you know, as we used to, if only— well, you know, if only is right here and now. Folks, before I turn it over to questions from the floor, what about predictions for the future? What is— and I'll save Johnny Thorsen till last Because he will always come out with the most outlandish idea. But what do you see in a practical sense that we should be expecting from now over into the horizon of the next couple of years?

Rachel Morowitz:Well, I mean, one thing we're already seeing from the corporate side is the corporate traveller wanting to be able to do everything they do as a consumer. So, you know, if they don't want things to be segmented— booking, day of travel, expense reporting— they want one seamless process because they're used to doing things, everything on their phone as a consumer. So, you know, we're really seeing that as a way to create one seamless experience, and that's a place where, you know, we want the UATP card involved. And I'm sure we'll be getting to more of that in the future as, you know, more corporates start using Apple Pay on board like a consumer does. Then that's a place that we need to be as well.

Martin Warner:Absolutely, with the capability. Johnny, I'll come to you last. What about you?

Vicki Jaramillo:Well, one of the things actually we are also doing We have a lot of remote check-ins, and one of the things that helps the airport is that—

Martin Warner:Yeah, from a variability of—

Vicki Jaramillo:You take that burden off of the airport as far as the baggage systems, because obviously, you know, there's a lot of people traveling and that puts a lot of pressure on a lot of airport systems. And, you know, Virgin Atlantic has 1,000 people a day that check in at Downtown Disney. What does that do? It takes 1,000+ bags out of our baggage systems. That happens as well as at the convention center, at the port, at all the Disney properties. So, you know, we continue to see using some of that technology too to work hand in hand with the airport as far as how do we grow but and still be kind of constrained and be able to use that technology.

Martin Warner:Absolutely.

Glenville Morris:Glenville? Yes, there are a couple of trends that we're seeing at MTT. So there's a big one that everyone's saying that apps are kind of dying. You've got the post-app economy. So whether they just become kind of notification—

Martin Warner:Post-app economy?

Glenville Morris:Post-app economy.

Martin Warner:That's a new one I'm making up.

Glenville Morris:They're saying that apps are just all kind of— mobile's just become a notification platform. So you'll have the rise of Facebook Messenger, WeChat across the world, and that's how apps will develop. You've got the single app strategy of someone like Facebook where they're offering photos via Instagram and Messenger does their messages. But I think what we're seeing is mobile will become this— or a mobile experience will become an experience that lives across every single platform that you use, whether that be your smartwatch, whether that be your mobile, whether that be your tablet, or even your kind of VR headset, or even your Apple TV. So we're starting to see kind of movement into that. So it's a travel experience now is going to live across multiple endpoints.

Martin Warner:John?

John Jackson:I think we will see success in one-to-one marketing, and, and I think Google will become the main player.

Martin Warner:I think those are 2 fairly safe bets.

John Dabkowski:I would actually, rather than a prediction, something I saw at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas just recently, a creative fair. Actually, it was United Airlines, a great demonstration of literally watching a movie. It could be a smart TV. This one we did it on Apple TV.

Vicki Jaramillo:Yeah.

John Dabkowski:You know, the movie's playing, you hit pause, and up on the bottom of the screen it shows where It sends a reminder to your watch or to your smartphone to say, okay, you know, do you want to go there? Start your booking experience now, or a reminder for later to come back to it later. So this integration of just seeing stuff that stimulates ideas for travel as part of your normal day, watching a movie, whatever you're doing, logging it for later, going back to it later, and having a personalized search all ready for you is He's almost here.

Martin Warner:Absolutely. And you've got a captive audience that if you sat on Korean Airlines and you're travelling from Australia— Peter, how long did it take you? So, 24 hours.

John Jackson:It was the shortest 24 hours he's ever had.

Martin Warner:But in 24 hours, you could do a lot of damage being marketed to at your seat. So that's about the appropriateness of offers. But it is an opportunity. That's for sure. Johnny, and then I'm going to take questions.

Johnny Thorsen:So I think Glenville is right, kind of in a way. The app economy as we started knowing it is coming to an end, and some people calling it the API economy is evolving, which means the strength of your API becomes one of your core assets. And that leads to the need for somebody new to consolidate all these APIs. And I don't want an app for each airline in the world I happen to I would in a year. I want to have one app. So, you know, we have TMCs for travel management companies. We might end up with an AMC, an app management company, that will provide me a great travel experience across the entire chain of services, from airport to hotel to airline. They will all contribute into that new AMC environment.

Martin Warner:That goes— that's the next generation once we've solved the one profile.

Johnny Thorsen:Yeah, it will know my one profile.

Martin Warner:We're on it, right? Okay, let me— thanks for the panel, by the way, for the preparation in those 4 fairly broad topics. But let me turn this over to the audience and see what, if any, questions that you may have related to distribution and being efficient on trip. Any questions from the audience for the panel? Derek? Thanks, Martin.

John Jackson:Thanks, panel.

Martin Warner:I'm just wondering the other panelists' views on Johnny's virtual airline thesis. Will it, will it happen? Good question, Derek. How close are we to the potential of a virtual airline? What is the opportunity?

John Dabkowski:I mean, some, some have been close already, right? You take TUIfly in Germany, For a long time there, they were doing very well marketing other people's flights, right? I think they've changed their business model a little bit. I think they're doing less of it now than they were a year or two ago, but they, they came very close to being a virtual airline, at least for the single-seat business. Their charter business is a little bit different, right? Well, their tour operator business is a little bit different, but they were very close to it, very close to it.

Rachel Morowitz:And I feel like at least, you know, there's always companies out there that want to try to become the Uber Uber of everything. So, you know, if it becomes to be like an Uber of ordering seats that are left over, then I could see at least, even if they fail, companies trying that strategy.

Martin Warner:And there may be certain routes, certain city pairs around the world that actually lend itself to it being at least trialled.

Vicki Jaramillo:Isn't that already happening though with, say, with freight forwarders or cargo, that that's already kind of going there? I mean, I've seen You see companies that forward air and you think that's an airplane, but it's a cargo company. All they do is book on everybody. So it's kind of that virtual already existing.

Martin Warner:It's a broker.

Vicki Jaramillo:For me?

Martin Warner:They're a broker. Okay. Well, I think at this point it just falls on me to thank our panelists for this afternoon and thank them for the preparation and the help that they've given me in being able to deliver the session this afternoon. So thanks, thanks everybody for listening, and I hope you've had a good session. Thank you.

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