Kudos to the IATA team for organizing a 400+ delegate face-to-face event #iataddrs in Madrid this week with full respect of sanitary measures. It sent a positive message “we’re out of the Zoom jail” for the recovery of business travel 😊. Here are my takeaways:
✈️ Less than 20 months after the beginning of the pandemic, the virus has not disappeared but it’s possible to run face-to-face events!
✈️ The debate has evolved from NDC to “Offers and Orders” and from technology issues to value creation (new offers, enhanced revenue management, optimized distribution mix, better customer engagement, optimized payment & fulfilment)
✈️ “New offers” are powered by continuous pricing and dynamic product bundling to better match evolving customers’ needs
✈️ IATA now has an index to measure the value creation and the airlines’ maturity in digital retailing
✈️ “Offers and Orders” lead airlines to break internal silos, between e-commerce and distribution or between revenue management and pricing
✈️ After “Offers and Orders”, payment is the next frontier, with the proliferation of digital payment methods (replacing cards in the customers’ wallets) and the growing costs of credit cards (US$10 billion)
✈️ The end game of the digital retailing journey is to free up airlines from legacy processes (filing, ticketing, proration, etc.) and technology (Edifact) before 2030, following the Finnair announcement who want to be free by 2025
👍🏻 It was amazing to see so many industry colleagues and friends in person after all this time. The best is yet to come!
