Travelport Update: Keeping Up With Emerging Technologies In Aviation
Travelport global head of product & marketing, air commerce, Ian Heywood highlights that it is no longer ‘if’ but ‘how’ and ‘when’ NDC becomes a reality, but says concerns remain over the time it is taking to deliver the proposed change. He highlights the size of the task from a technology and human processes standpoint; how Travelport are developing platforms to take further steps in the process while we await the industrial sized solutions to arrive in the marketplace; and urges the industry to be open to collaboration in order to successfully move forward.
Transcript
Ian HeywoodIf we talk about IATA NDC and what's the changes going on the industry is things are starting to move now, so I think we have moved beyond "Is this going to happen, is the industry going to change?" It's now the industry is changing.
I think what is still concerning some people is the amount of time that it seems to be taking and will take and I just think that's the realities.
What you've got is you've got 40 years of old technology that has got to be undone and that is not only just the technology itself, but it's also all the human process and just the processes that are built within the technology that has been there. And that has got to be moved aside and new technology coming in, new processes coming in, and the airlines and ourselves and the agents learning to work with that, and that is just naturally going to take a long time.
So I think you'll see continuous progress. Travelport, we are due to launch our first what we call an app, a smart point app, into the market in this summer, but that is a temporary solution. But again, it's another step in that process to when you're getting industrialized solutions into the marketplace, but it enables us in the airlines to start working, then testing their solutions, then testing the robustness of their APIs, and starting to be able to put down differentiated content into the marketplace.
But I think you're going to see at least another at least two years, if not three years, of planning changes behind the scenes, and then I think the airline in the industry will be able to move forward at a much greater pace.
Well, there's always resistance to change, so there's some people that have embraced it. They want to be a leader in it, they want to move forward, and then there's other parts in the industry, whether it's within the GDSs, you can see that Travelport has always taken that leadership position. Some of our competitors have taken a less of a position, but they're now moving forward. You've also got within the agencies someone to be members of the pilots, they want to be involved, they want to see what happens. Others are still going "Can we stop this? Does the industry really need this change?" And the same with the airlines. Some are leading and others are saying, "We want to be a close follower," and others are going like, "Well, we're not sure. We'll just take a backward view and we'll see what happens."
But I think as you get more experience and things start happening, then you're going to get everyone else coming on board, or else it's just going to be left behind.
The industry, it's got to just be collaboration. No one knows all the answers. We are going into something that's new and it is only going to be successful if the whole industry works together and it means the airlines have got to get closer to the agents - I think that's a really good thing - and they need to work together, because the airlines will be able to put out offers out there that they haven't been able to do in the past, completely different. But they need to know what will work for the customers, and so they will be able to tailor their offers more to specific customers, more to specific agents, but they need to work with those agents and the customers of those agents to know what is it that you really want? What can I do to encourage you to fly more with me? Then it isn't going to just be all about a lower fare. It's going to be some service, some will be ticketing time limits, some may be you get different WiFi packages or baggage in with you, your fares.
So there's things that the airlines can do that they have not been able to do in the past, but you're only going to be able to do by understanding each others' business and working together.
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