Sabre: From Airlines To Retailers – Changing The Thought Process

Transcript

Dino Gelmetti:One of the main areas that we're focused on is around how do we help airlines become world-class retailers. So there's a lot of discussion around how they create offers to their customers similar to like an Amazon or, you know, those type of retailers. There's new standards, distribution capabilities through IATA with NDC. So it's all about how do we make them world-class retailers, how do we help them package up products and distribute them through any channel with all the freedom that they're looking for. And with that comes techniques like personalisation. So how do we personalise an offer for a customer through a particular channel and try and make it compelling enough where they will take it. So it's using artificial intelligence and machine learning to explore the data they have about their customers and coming up with the right offer at the right time at the right price. With NDC, it's pretty much in its early stages. So we recently announced a partnership with United Airlines. And so we're now looking at how do we take advantage of the NDC channel for them. So we are starting to work with a lot of partner airlines, but it's a standard and it's about how do we provide content in that format through various channels. And with these new sort of techniques, there's also the old world that you've got to take into account as well as the new world, and how do we help these bigger legacy carriers into making that journey. So there are examples where we're working today like the United Airlines one, and I think over the next 12 months you're going to see more and more of those sorts of of initiatives that we're working with various airlines. Agencies will still play a significant role, so it depends also on the carrier, right? If they've got a large captive market, then it's easy for them to go through a direct channel because they're well known to them and they can potentially bypass agencies because they have a great brand in those markets. But when you start thinking about carriers like, say, Emirates, where their markets are not in the UAE, their markets are outside. So whilst they'll still want to try and take advantage of the direct channels, but they'll still want to take advantage of the agencies, say, in North America or in Asia, because they don't have the same sort of brand and direct presence. So what's important is that we make that content the NDC content available to not only the direct channels, but also to the indirect channels. So the content should be relatively the same, may change from market to market, but as a service provider to the industry and to the travel industry as a whole, we just need to make sure that our technology is going to support both scenarios, and that's what we're working on at the moment. As I mentioned, NDC is really a standard format. that we need to supply through. But NDC is just a capability, so it's what we do around that. So we have a program in place called Beyond NDC. So I mentioned before things like personalization. NDC per se doesn't do that, but it's what we build around NDC that makes it more compelling. So we're looking at things like dynamic pricing, you know, so personalization. So as you as a customer come through various channels, We need to make sure that we sort of figure out who you are, we then come up with a package that makes sense to you, and then also come up with a pricing that you're willing to pay. So it's not just about the lowest price anymore, it's about what best value can you give me through that package overall that makes sense. So it's all those items and elements that we're building around the NDC capability Which is what we're working with our customers on to help them with. Personalization, huge opportunity with AI and machine learning, right? So some of the algorithms we're looking at, if I take it down to a lower level, things like customer segmentation. You know, in the past it may have been done based on frequent flyer tier. Well, now we're looking at techniques like segmentation based on trip purpose, right? So is it a holiday? Is it a work trip? Maybe it's an extended holiday at the end of a work trip. Maybe it's a romantic getaway without children. Maybe it's a family holiday. Taking into account all the attributes around those particular segments, we then try when a customer comes in, because for an airline, most customers are anonymous, right? They may have flown them once, or they may have came through an agency, so there's no real data or record of that customer coming through. So based on that trip purpose, we then try and figure out what the best sort of product or package or bundle with ancillaries and ticketing would make sense based on trip purpose. So the underlying technology we're using there is artificial intelligence and machine learning. So it's about what data do we have access to, how can we learn more and more about those particular segments or, you know, trip purposes, And then how do we apply that to a bundle that will be compelling to the customer? So it's those sorts of techniques that we're looking at. And also from a technology point of view, we're looking at things like cloud and microservices, or more the API economy as they're calling it. So we're looking at how do we modernize the engine, if you like, to allow our customers then to adopt these newer initiatives and technologies in a much more faster and agile way. So it's also about how do we modernize the engine as well as some of these new initiatives.

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