3 ms·
No, that's pretty much it. I recall a specific interaction I had with a South American carrier that really colored my opinion of the future of our company. We w
by dmbaggett 11y ago
No, that's pretty much it. I recall a specific interaction I had with a South American carrier that really colored my opinion of the future of our company. We were pitching them on our search system and it was going well for a while. But then they told us that their hosting provider had offered to lower their distribution fees through travel agents by some material percentage if they used their search instead of ours... and their CFO essentially made them take the deal.
I seriously doubt the proliferation of travel sites has changed the leverage of the parties much: you can still count on one hand the number of entities that offer all of search, distribution, and hosting. They will remain an oligopoly for some time to come, and will, I'm sure, continue to use that to their advantage.
Regarding Google (or Alphabet, or whatever they are now), I have no idea. I didn't stay on after the merger, and frankly don't ever talk to them because every conversation I've ever had with them has been totally one-sided. (They expect me to tell them stuff, and then won't say anything... because Google secrets matter!)
- corford 11y agoThis is why I really hope NDC (http://www.iata.org/whatwedo/airline-distribution/ndc/pages/default.aspx http://www.iata.org/whatwedo/airline-distribution/ndc/pages/...) takes off, airlines simplify their fare rules, invest in IT talent and start self hosting. Travel providers could then connect directly to an airline's NDC API for scheduling, pricing and ticketing without the need for middlemen and gatekeepers. Distribution would finally be back under the airline's control and there would be a lot more innovation.
- skewart 11y agoNDC sounds awesome, and so do simplified fare rules. Are there any seriously misaligned incentives that would prevent it from happening, or is it more just general bureaucratic slowness?
- corford 11y agoThe NDC spec is still evolving (and suffering from a bit of mission creep). There's also the chicken and egg problem - airlines aren't going to invest in building in-house NDC based hosting and distribution platforms until there's enough market demand for it. Market demand wont appear until airlines start distributing over NDC. I'd have thought too that the GDS providers aren't exactly thrilled by the prospect of being easily cut out of the distribution chain... There will still be a need for aggregators though since not all travel providers will have the technical know-how or desire to develop their own NDC capable platforms/software. NDC would just level the playing field a bit.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]