10th January, 2022
Year after year airlines and the entire industry talks about simplifying travel, be it for the shopping phase or the actual journey.
Yes, travel shopping is vastly different from buying a book or paying for a subscription for Netflix. But is it time we stop saying this?
Simplification of processes
A vital part of transformation relates to doing away the concept of PNR and ticket-based processes.
Revisiting the role of NDC and ONE Order in airline retailing and servicing the passenger in an agile manner, it was envisaged that NDC will continue to create e-tickets. But once there was shift to ONE Order there will be no tickets. The passenger would be served without any complexity, with a unified single order record that contains all the requisite passenger details and technology to facilitate or read it.
So how are airlines gearing up for digital retailing and technology investment going forward? What to expect from the IATA Airline Retailing Maturity index? The pandemic isn’t over yet, and travellers’ experience is far from being streamlined. Are processes that are being planned going to take hassle out of travel in 2022? The index launched in October last year combines Settlement with Orders (SwO), ONE Order, and NDC certifications and broadens the scope to include retailing essentials, such as shop, order, pay, settle, account, and setup.
Sum of all the parts
The processes, the industry standard, travel-specific tech and overall transformation at an organizational level all of this must streamline the entire journey of a passenger.
A modern digital consumer has certain expectations that have to be met.
The likes of Travelport and Amadeus have been acknowledging this and also assert that they are making progress.
“In innovation terms, travel is a ‘late adopter’, especially compared to retailers in other industries, like Amazon, Netflix, or Spotify,” pointed out Travelport’s Chief Marketing Officer Jen Catto in a recent blog post. Referring to modern retailing, she said shopping for travel shouldn’t be overwhelming, it should be easy to sell and technology must make “retailing better, easier, and faster than before. She added, “…the overall customer experience is the result of multiple interactions, not just the first, simple sale. Because at the end of the day, that’s what modern retailing is all about: impressing your customer in every transaction.”
Hervé Prezet, Amadeus’ Vice President Industry and Expertise, NDC and ONE Order are only a part of what’s driving change in digital retailing. “In the future, we envision self-service for disruption (even in cases of interlining, ancillaries or third party content), easier partnerships between airlines and third-party content providers, tailored packages, dynamic pricing, easier settlements and more,” he wrote in a blog post.
Let’s see how travel retailing shapes up in 2022!
By Ritesh Gupta
Ai Team
