Technology providers support over a trillion dollars in air travel sales every year. At Threedot, we group the landscape into three layers: (1) airline distribution technology, (2) content aggregation, and (3) travel seller technology.
1. Airline Distribution Technology
This layer helps airlines create offers and sell them through different channels. It includes the older Passenger Service Systems (PSS) and the newer Offer & Order Management Systems (OMS). In addition, it includes NDC APIs and other pricing, shopping, and offer engines.
As a result, this technology is the foundation for how airlines build products, price them, and distribute them. Some key players include Amadeus, Sabre Corporation, PROS, Accelya, FLYR, and others.
2. Air Travel Content Aggregation
Next, content aggregators sit between airlines and travel sellers. They connect to many airline systems and then provide one combined feed to the seller. In other words, they reduce the effort needed to integrate with airlines one by one.
They often pull content from both:
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legacy EDIFACT (older formats), and
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modern API content, including NDC for full-service carriers.
Because of that, they help travel sellers access more content in a more consistent way. Non-GDS players in API aggregation include Travelfusion, Duffel, TPConnects Technologies, Verteil Technologies, AirGateway, and others.
3. Travel Seller Technology
Finally, travel sellers (like OTAs and TMCs) use booking tools and platforms to search, book, and service flights and ancillaries. These tools may use GDS content, API content, or both. Also, many of them support servicing steps such as changes, refunds, and post-booking workflows.
So, this layer is where sellers manage the day-to-day booking and support work. Non-GDS players include Spotnana, KAYAK, Thomalex, SAP Concur, Atriis Technologies, and others.
Why this matters
Overall, navigating this landscape is important if you want better distribution outcomes. For example, the right choices can improve efficiency, reduce cost, and support the move toward modern retailing. However, the tradeoffs can be real, because each layer has different technology, pricing, and legal constraints. Also, many vendors operate across more than one layer, so the boundaries are not always clean.
Want to explore this space?
If you’d like help exploring the air travel distribution technology landscape, reach out to hello@threedot.io
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