ATPCO partnering with UNEX
Airlines have substantially increased their shares of ancillary revenues in recent years. While pure income from ticket revenue is likely to decline further, the importance of ancillary services in the overall product offerings of airlines will grow in the future. It is possible that the current COVID-19 crisis may even accelerate this development. Airlines with a high share of indirect distribution through traditional global distribution systems will face challenges, as product transparency and upselling opportunities are rather limited in this environment.
This significantly constrains the upsell potential for ancillary products of many network airlines, while revenue opportunities and commercial quick wins widely remain unleveraged.
This is where ATPCO’s NGS approach seeks to provide an industry-wide solution. NGS allows customers to search for airline offers not only by price but also by product specification and quality. Additionally, channel partners can create and display informative and attractive shopping offers based on state-of-the-art retailing practices. Through NGS, airlines can better differentiate their products in an extremely competitive market environment.
Customers have the opportunity to compare different product options as airlines become more customer-centric by allowing them to choose the optimal individual product composition. ATPCO seeks to build a data-driven retailing standard through which airlines can better present and group their products and services. In turn, product differentiation enables airlines to improve/increase their brand awareness and offer a better shopping experience, thus increasing customer satisfaction.
This allows airlines to meet customer expectations by creating targeted ancillary offers and branded fares and products. These offerings are effectively distributed to all desired sales channels. Using standardized data in an industry-wide framework will create comparable products and attributes across the entire sales and distribution landscape. This will increase transparency, and customers will know exactly what they are purchasing
To summarize, NGS converts an airline’s ancillary strategies into distributable data, which means that airlines can reach travelers at any shopping point with a transparent and differentiated offer. Fares are finally translated into brands and distributed consistently to improve ancillary upsell opportunities and brand loyalty of customers.
UNEX is an ATPCO NDC exchange partner. In this role, we offer the whole package ranging from NDC and ONE Order strategies to implementable state-of-the-art retail environments in the aviation and travel industry. UNEX accompanies the introduction and development of NGS and assists airlines in becoming fully prepared for this new standard.