Most recent updates first…

Thursday 9 February 2012:

• Travelport and Bangkok Airways agree new multi-year distribution agreement. The deal gives Galileo and Worldspan-connected agents access to fares and inventory from the regional carrier, operating on 20 domestic and international routes.
• Amadeus and Conferma unite to launch automated hotel payment service. The billback support system, powered by Conferma, automates the need for travel managers to manually process hotel payments when booking through Amadeus.
• Vayant goes sub-second with new flight search technology
• Have travel agents been left high and dry by mobile?
• Who is driving evolution of business travel technology? The end-user, not tech companies
• Personality crisis: Am I an airline or a travel retailer?

Monday 6 February 2012:

• Sabre introduces an Eco-Certified Hotel Programme for the GDS. The system works by highlighting more than 4,700 hotels which are certified by globally recognised bodies as being “environmentally-responsible”. Sabre systems Red and Hotel RFP will be displaying the mark to 180,000 and 2,000 users respectively.  Sabre says it will “hold the line” against so-called greenwashing by accommodation providers by only including hotels in the system which have been audited for their eco-friendliness against Global Sustainable Tourism Council guidelines.
• Gullivers founder David Babai returns with group trip wholesaler G2 Travel
• Travelport debuts ViewTrip mobile trip management tool in UK, global roll-out to follow
• Asia hotel prices – February to April 2012

Friday 3 February 2012:

• Amadeus brings in former Wyndham executive to become vice president of hotels. Jeff Edwards will be charged with expanding the Amadeus hnotel division, covering both distribution and IT services. Prior to Wyndham, where he was chief information officer and EVP of distribution, Edwards was president and CEO of Micros Fidelio. He joins the new business wing of Amadeus alongside Thomas Drexler for rail and John Jarrell for airport IT.
• Guestmob uses Big Data to try and reinvent the opaque hotel booking model
• Bespoke travel trend pushes payment out of traditional reservation systems
• New distribution channels – Google Travel, Facebook, Apple and … Pinterest?

Wednesday 1 February 2012:

• Amadeus has bought airline strategy consultancy Airconomy. The deal, for an undisclosed fee, sees the Frankfurt-based company run as a separate business incubator to “develop ideas for new market intelligence reports”. The acquisition follows a deal struck with Airconomy in July 2010 to launch business intelligence platform to help carriers plan and develop networks.
• Travelport research shows agent confusion in airline ancillary market
• Five of the most important things every travel brand should be doing right now
• Europe rail distribution evolving as SilverRail and Pharos Datacom sign big deals
• Amadeus outage hit other GDSs as airline systems crashed

Previous GDS updates:

• GDS news from Travelport, Amadeus, Sabre, Abacus – January 2012
• GDS news from Travelport, Amadeus, Sabre, Abacus – December 2011
• GDS news from Travelport, Amadeus, Sabre, Abacus – November 2011
• GDS news from Travelport, Amadeus, Sabre, Abacus – October 2011
• GDS news from Travelport, Amadeus, Sabre, Abacus – September 2011
• GDS news: Travelport, Amadeus, Sabre, Abacus – August 2011
• GDS news: Travelport, Amadeus, Sabre, Abacus – July 2011
• Travelport, Amadeus, Sabre, Abacus briefs – June 2011
• Travelport, Amadeus, Sabre, Abacus briefs – May 2011
• Travelport, Amadeus, Sabre, Abacus briefs – April 2011
• Travelport, Amadeus, Sabre, Abacus briefs – March 2011
• Travelport, Amadeus, Sabre, Abacus briefs – February 2011
• Travelport, Amadeus, Sabre, Abacus briefs – January 2011
• Travelport, Amadeus, Sabre, Abacus briefs – December 2010
• GDS Bitesize – January 2010 to November 2010

Vayant believes the solution, which is in beta, is a first for the travel industry and says it aims to provide cost-effective fare search for airlines, online travel agencies, tour operators and meta search engines delivering results in milliseconds.

Users can configure the technology according to their business requirements and the company says the technology is 80% accurate.

FastSearch, which avoids the traditional caching method used by much of the travel industry, displays fares, schedules, availability and tax information and is updated whenever any changes are made to the components.

Vayant’s launch might be the answer to the prayers of many as last September, a post from Tnooz node Frederic Lalonde on big data discussed the importance of speed in travel search and highlighted how no travel company had been able to come up with a solution.

The compan plans to charge a monthly fee based on the volume of transactions made over FastSearch.

The company is planning further releases of the technology later this year including calendar and affinity search as well as the ability to search within a specific budget.

Vayant was founded in 2007 (Tlabs here) but really started elbowing its way into the airfare technology world about 18 months ago.

Today, travel agents,  the human kind,  are either corporate agents or the entrepreneurial types who are scraping as fast as they can to make a buck, euro or quid.

Frankly, in the ever urgent world of needing to make money from the shrinking pie, they have to be increasingly efficient and don’t do things unless it contributes to the bottom line.

Agents are also very dependent on their GDSs, acknowledge the frailty of the system but, in the case of European agents at least, the extent of the content is barely adequate to provide ubiquitous service.

However, the increasing complexity in travel without the corresponding increases in net revenue makes for a hard life – things aren’t as much fun any more and perhaps agents have an inbuilt resistance to change.

At a recent Web In Travel conference in Singapore, Gerry Samuels of Mobile Travel Technologies, told a story of how when he was asked to develop an agent mobile solution, he developed a couple of options but agents chose the familiar green screen lookalike.

And how does the consumer perceive the agent?

To gauge this, I typed “why travel agents suck” into Google and turned up a pretty significant cache of results but put it in quotes and the results drop to nine.

Contrast this with the search term “why travel agents still exist” and you get 1970 results  - good news or false hope?

Part of the problem is they are choosing something familiar and don’t know what will work in future.

They tend to be mired in process and the here and now, not that future state that mobile is representative of.

And, as the Boomers leave the market, older agents are retiring and dying off, imagine the new workforce coming in who won’t know how to work with green screens (or even blue ones for that matter!).

Like many businesses which struggle with the evolution of technology, the travel industry has tried very hard to make mobile a cornerstone of the next generation platforms.

But. are these solutions just pursuing technology for its own sake?

Perhaps a critical question is how are we making it interesting for young people – the internet generation – to work for the industry? Can we entice them in? Or are there just too many older generations trying to migrate their business instead of allowing creation of new business?

Sadly, the position I would argue is that intermediaries didn’t realise the importance of mobile and delegated responsibility (as they have for many years) to the suppliers and now find themselves out of the loop.

Indeed by ignoring mobile agents were bypassed by the suppliers and providers who found they could go direct to the consumer and that an agent in the loop didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

There is no shortage of applications for users of travel in the mobile space, but what about the number of b2b applications for the intermediary community? Very few are operating today.

Mobile in travel has a broader meaning than just fully functioning “agent in a box” services.

Most will agree that the better apps tend to do one thing really well and travel with all its complexity is not easy to do well.

And perhaps that is the crux of this story – agents left high and dry by mobile are a victim of the evolution of travel.

NB: Image via Shutterstock

Babai is one of the figures behind a new wholesaler focusing on group travel, known as G2 Travel, a remarkably similar offering from the GTA (launched as Gullivers Travel Agency in 1975) business he sold to Travelport-forerunner Cendant in 2005 for an eye-watering $1.1 billion.

In Blues Brothers style, Babai appears to be getting the old band back together, too, assembling the senior management team at G2 Travel from various GTA alumni.

The only named employee so far is David Littlefair who will run G2′s offices in Bangkok after leaving GTA in September 2011 as managing director of operations in Thailand.

Other regional offices include Hong Kong, Jakarta, London, Rome and Bucharest.

G2 says it plans to offer “group land services” such as hotels and other local products from around the world, with a particular focus on the Far East, but only as part of a third party, wholesale-type relationship with travel agents.

G2 is not using third party suppliers for Europe, however non-European destinations will be through third party suppliers, an official says.

Very little information is coming out of G2 so far, but the rhetoric is there:

“We recognise in this world of mega company buy-outs and mergers, on-line hotel distribution and multi layer sales and distribution strategies that the traditional values and skills of servicing wholesale groups business has been neglected.

“Specialist group purchasing requires unique skills, experienced and tailor made IT systems, not only to satisfy our clients, but also our suppliers. We recognise that hotels do not want to be dictated to by multinational giants on how to sell their rooms, encompassing the whole spectrum of wholesale, retail and on-line distribution.

“We recognise the service supplier needing a choice of a partner who truly appreciates the word partner in both buoyant periods and testing times.”

Babai’s disappearing act (and previous well-known lack of enthusiasm for personal publicity) was intentional, with Cendant locking him down with a non-compete for six years after the sale of GTA in 2005.

Travelport offloaded GTA to Kuoni for $720 million in March last year, just a month before Babai’s expulsion from the sector ran out.

ViewTrip is an existing desktop service for Travelport-connected customers, but the latest incarnation has been developed solely for Android and iPhone mobile devices.

ViewTrip Mobile is essentially a mobile travel concierge service which will be made available via travel agencies, primarily in the corporate travel sector.

Travelport CIO Mark Ryan first hinted that a mobile version of ViewTrip was in development in January this year.

Tools included on the service range from live flight alerts and updates and airport/city guides to GPS-enabled amenity and service finding tools (such as restaurants) and a currency converter.

But clearly the main element of the app is the management service, allowing users to add and edit travel arrangements from their handset.

Travelport’s ViewTrip Mobile joins the likes of the Mobile Travel Assistant from Amadeus and TripCase/GetThere mobile products through Sabre.

Travelport is introducing its effort in the UK first, with other countries expected to come on-board from the second quarter of 2012.

Corporate travel agency Chelsea Travel Management was involved in a testing programme for the tool, labelling it “one of the richest apps of its kind”.

The report shows the retail sector is keen to assist airlines sell ancillary items via the GDS but is confused about the services each individual airline offers and concerned about productivity.

The study shows only 16% of agents consider the unbundling trend as an opportunity to charge or increase fees and 44% say they do not charge more for booking optional services.

Agents also say selling add-ons requires 29% more time and they would be more interested if the process was more efficient.

More than three-quarters of agents say they are already selling ancillary services while 8% say they don’t with agents in Europe (41%) saying it doesn’t bring additional revenue while a third of agents in the Americas say the services are not available for agency booking.

When prompted on the value of branded fares – those that are bundled together with services such as preferred seat selection and baggage fee – retailers say it would help them offer a full service as well as compete with airline websites.

The survey was carried out on 610 agencies across 12 countries.

NB: Image via Shutterstock

It’s not unusual to hear people say that over the past few years, travel companies worldwide have witnessed tremendous change in the industry.

But as more and more wholesale resources become available via XML connections and online B2B systems, travel agents are forced to access a growing number of platforms to perform queries.

At the same time the industry has witnessed (and continues to witness) strong growth in new distribution channels (mainly mobile and internet). It is not always clear how a single agency can manage them all, allowing large OTAs to fill the void.

The main challenge and the key for future success lies in one’s ability to establish an efficient distribution network of competitive products, accompanied by effective business controls with automated administration tools.

Here are five areas which are pivotal to the success of any travel business in 2012.

1. Access great resources and improve your offering to customers

A vast majority of travel product suppliers, wholesalers, and brokers provide online access to their inventories.

Online B2B systems allow travel agents to instantly access a multitude of inventories when searching for the best rates and availability for their clients, across all product categories.

Not long ago, strict financial terms hampered one’s ability to contract with many providers simultaneously. Many of these providers now offer flexible financial arrangements, making it feasible for travel operations to access and distribute their products to their travelers.

Creative travel companies are constantly on the lookout for new providers: With the right resources you can provide your clients not only with the best rates, but also with highly specialized products that are difficult to find elsewhere – providing your company with an essential competitive edge.

2. Access all of your resources from a single point of access

The hunt for the best rates and availability has led travel companies to simultaneously manage a multitude of B2B systems.

Many attempts were made to aggregate resources using XML technology – somewhat simplifying the search process. However, while XML integration is simple and inexpensive, several crucial problems remain:

• Wholesalers providing XML connectivity to their inventory transmit imperfect data – as they compete against others for your attention they strive to differentiate themselves with unique product IDs, and product categories. XML aggregation is of little help, if for example, you cannot instantly compare all of the offers for the same hotel, or immediately identify the best offer for a specific car.
• Moreover, an imperfect merge of several XMLs, without the proper business logic and sophisticated system infrastructure, cannot be used to develop a network of sub agents and affiliates – which can serve as a catalyst for significant growth of your distribution network.
• Systems allowing multi-product search of ‘Mapped’ content from numerous suppliers – enable travel companies to quickly put together the most competitive travel package – online, over the phone, or in person.

3. Grow your B2B/B2C presence and expand your distribution network

No doubt, the more points of sale you set up – the greater your chances are for success. It’s no wonder that all of the large OTAs offer affiliate programs – iFrame distribution is cost effective, and gets them featured on numerous websites, ultimately leading to exponential sales growth.

HotelsCombined has had tremendous success in this respect, while Expedia’s Affiliate Network has become a major source of growth for the company. How can you compete with that?

• By providing sub agents with a unified access point (B2B) to all of your resources, complete with a B2C booking engine to place on their website.
• The ease of becoming an affiliate of a large OTA attracts novice travel entrepreneurs, but has little value for professional travel agents. If you can provide instant access to a unified and intuitive B2B system suitable for local travel professionals, and compliment it with an online booking engine to place on their website (all under your agreements). All this complete with professional support stemming from your market expertise – and you are bound to become an attractive partner by local and international travel professionals alike.
• If you can get 100 travel agents to make five bookings a month on your system – you’ve already won. Now all you need to focus on is negotiating better rates, and finding new and exciting resources.

4. Business controls: Margins, user access, credit, risk, currency conversion

Managing multi-user operations requires having sufficient controls in place.

Your system must be able to define role-based user-access to information, grant your authorized agents the ability to instantly control margins across products, suppliers, users, destinations – down to single properties and bookings, etc.

i. Access Control

• Managing numerous users calls for role-based user setup. Who is authorized to make reservations? Create new users? Control mark ups? Cancel orders? Modify credit limits? See the original supplier price, or the supplier’s identity?

ii. Margin Control

• Growing your distribution network implies working with a variety of financial arrangements each with different profit margins. The ability to establish a hierarchical fee-structure will simplify your revenue-stream control on one hand, while providing the essential freedom to your sub-agents to manage their own sales.

iii) Credit Control

• Providing travel agents with access to your supplier agreements requires you to control when and how financial concerns are addressed. What happens if a booking cancelation date is coming up and no payment from your agent is in sight? How much can a single user book before having to clear his balance with you?
• It is essential that your system provides you with automatic notifications of approaching deadlines, and even auto-cancel the order before your account is charged. It should allow you to set up booking caps, and release credit as payments are received. Ultimately, it should allow you to do so across numerous levels, and according to varying user specifications. A well designed distribution system should provide you with tools and automated controls that are essential for safe and efficient operations.

iv) Currency Conversions

• Make sure you don’t lose money due to outdated currency conversion rates with manual and automatic-updating of representative rates, and even add a percentage or fee for currency conversions.

5. Streamline processes (multi-segment reporting, CRM, data entry)

Working with several suppliers on their B2Bs poses a huge data-entry challenge. Booking a flight from one source, a car from another, and a hotel from a third, requires someone to access three different systems, pull out three different reports, and consolidate them into a single accounting management system.

Multiply this process by all sales handled by your in-house and sub agents, and your online booking engines. Your data entry task must be error prone, arduous and time consuming, and ultimately a very expensive task.

The advantage of managing all of your suppliers from a single platform is that your order management process is considerably simplified to: working with a single XML or CSV file which includes all of your orders, across all product categories.

The result: substantial time savings and significant data entry error reduction.

The need for travel operations to adapt to the changing nature of the global travel industry, and at the core of this process is the deployment of the right technology portfolio.

This technology mix should not only enable uniform connectivity to existing resources, but to also to take into account future content needs. It is of an essence to be able to push the resulting output across as many channels as possible – sub agents, affiliates, and direct consumer facing websites.

The right technology should allow an effective control of the entire cycle – both to protect the operation from unwanted credit exposure, as well as to provide independent users with the best set of tools to grow their sales.

At the end of the day, it’s all about being able to offer the best and most comprehensive travel product – to as many consumers as possible without losing your pants in the process of doing so.

NB: This is a guest article by Andrey Spektor, CEO of Gimmonix (owner of Carsolize).

NB2: TLabs Showcase – Carsolize.

NB3: TLabs Reprise – Carsolize 12 months on.

NB4: Image via Shutterstock.

Most recent statement from Amadeus:

“Minimising such incidents and their impact on our customers is very important to Amadeus.

“During the incident, our priority was to return to normal service as quickly as possible; once it closed we focused on identifying the cause and analysing actions we could take to avoid reoccurrence. The cause of the problem appears to be a network component.

“We are continuing to investigate this in detail. Once again, we regret the inconvenience this incident may have caused.”

ORIGINAL:

The extent of a significant technology failure at Amadeus yesterday is beginning to unravel, as other systems across the industry are now known to have been affected.

Amadeus is remaining tight-lipped as to what triggered such a major collapse, when an outage which lasted a number of hours managed to hit passenger self check-in and reservation systems, agency bookings as well as airport counter systems.

A post on the Amadeus blog this morning said the incident had been fully resolved, with an apology for the inconvenience. Officials will not disclose the nature and size of the outage.

It is understood that although Amadeus customers were hit by the problems, other GDSs were also impacted as the Amadeus airline IT system ALTEA was involved.

ALTEA currently powers over 100 airlines around the world, including British Airways, Qantas, Iberia and Cathay Pacific.

Although it is an Amadeus-run platform, agencies on other distribution networks such as Sabre and Travelport which were trying to connect to some of the airlines involved were also unable to carry out fare queries or make bookings.

A number of insiders across the GDSs have confirmed that the outage was far bigger than initially thought given that the ALTEA system effectively controls how agencies on other networks connect to airline reservation systems.

NB: Image via Shutterstock.

Most recent updates first…

Tuesday 31 January 2012:

• Unbundling is evil – there must be a better way
• Virgin Australia and Sabre sign multi-year distribution agreement with Sabre. The deal gives all Sabre-connected leisure and business agents access to all Virgin Australia fares and inventory, including ancillary products. Virgin Australia has also upgraded to Sabre’s AdvanceConnect system.
• Travelport announces launch of service to allow booking of pre-paid bags on Cimber Sterling flights. Travelport-connected agents will be able to use the service immediately. The Danish airline operates over 1,000 flights per week and carries 2.5 million passengers a year on its domestic and European network.
• Amadeus technology outage hits major airline systems and agency bookings
• Tnooz-BCD Travel FREE Webinar: Getting in sync – Tools for communicating with business travelers

Monday 30 January 2012:

• Amadeus calls on rail industry to adopt “shared approach” to developing IT systems. The Back On Track report by Professor James Woudhuysen argues that the rail industry has been held back by legacy IT systems and should therefore consider adopting next generation IT solutions, similar to those used by airlines. “The concept of an outsourced community platform, a shared system used by rival rail companies to manage customer processing, means rail companies would benefit from the latest technology whilst remaining free to innovate and differentiate,” the reports says. “This approach would see the rail experience transformed, allowing for personalised journeys, the selling of ancillary services and multiple options for ticketing.”
• FairSearch blasts Google Flight Search ad model as online travel group enlists

Thursday 26 January 2012:

• Amadeus signs four-year distribution agreement with Travix mega-group. The deal covers the portfolio of Travix brands such as CheapTickets, Vliegwinkel.nl, Flugladen, BudgetAir, Vayama and Easytobook. The Amadeus Extreme Search system is also included as part of agreement.
• With Google, Apple and Facebook on the prowl, will hotels lose even more control of distribution?
• Is it time for a global HotelWiki to assist the industry (and consumers) with hotel distribution?

Wednesday 25 January 2012:

• Travelport signs major agreement with Satguru Travel & Tourism to expand operations in Africa. The partnership is said to be the largest of its kind signed by Travelport and gives it 16 new country distributor agreements across the continent, growing its existing network from 27 to 41 and extending GDS operations in a further two. National distributor centres for Travelport will run in the following countries: Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Southern Sudan and Togo. Existing Satguru ecommerce tools will be made available to customers as part of the deal.
• North American hotel prices – January to March 2012

Monday 23 January 2012:

• Amadeus signs Memorandum of Understanding with the European Commission to promote travel between Europe and South America. The agreement is part of a wider scheme to increase traffic to other regions around the world during low seasons by utilising spare airline and accommodation capacity. The programme will encourage airlines that are ready to offer fare concessions through travel agencies and tour operators that would organise relevant travel packages, as well as with the European Commission.

Saturday 21 January 2012:

• Travelport has tapped Amadeus for senior executive Gilles Mascaras who joins as vice president for channel strategy and pricing. Mascaras will be responsible for identifying and prioritising markets, channels and customer groups for Travelport GDS products and services.  Mascaras had a 19-year career at Amadeus and was most recently ran the global online travel agencies and large leisure travel agents group.
• Priceline has successfully integrated Travelport‘s 360 Fares system. The global fares and pricing system powers all fares and pricing transactions for Travelport’s global distribution systems.
• Travelport announces three-year agreement with global IT outsourcing company Stefanini. The new partnership continues an existing agreement for Stefanini to provide Travelport with multi-lingual customer help desk services to its global distribution system and Galileo customers in Asia, alongside existing global Worldspan customers and Galileo customers in Europe.
• Why the mechanics behind travel distribution will blow your mind
• Travelport: IPO still a consideration, admits mistakes made with introduction of Agility
• Can a global distribution system be cool?
• Amadeus strengthens hotel offering via HRS distribution deal

Tuesday 17 January 2012:

• Travelport and TAP Portugal agree to extend distribution agreement. The deal gives all Travelport-connected agents around the world full access to TAP’s fares and classes. The pair have also agreed to work on a number of strategic projects including development of merchandising and group booking systems.
• Siri the mobile travel agent [VIDEO]

Saturday 14 January 2012:

• Start of American Airlines-Sabre antitrust case extended two months.
• Travel technology steady hand test [GAME].
• Financial analysts downplay Room Key threat to Expedia and Priceline.

Thursday 12 January 2012:

• Sabre identifies government regulation of airport security, emissions and taxes as one of the top issues affecting airlines. The bi-annual survey found fuel prices (81%), government regulations (72%) and airport security (59%) as the key challenges for the aviation sector. Issues having a positive impact included revenue/yield (81%), customer loyalty (81%) and IT investment (76%), according to executive at 80 regional and global airlines across the world.
• Room Key: Open to all, will lower hotel distribution costs, features and marketing to come
• Hotel giants come together to launch Room Key search site
• Amadeus report shows travellers willing to trade personal information for less travel stress
• US rejects delay request from global airlines on bag fee transparency
• Practical application of semantic technology and personalization in travel

Tuesday 10 January 2012:

• Amadeus signs distribution deal with Travelodge. The agreement gives Amadeus-connected agents access to 490 properties on the Travelodge portfolio in the UK, Ireland and Spain. Travelodge will also be included in the Amadeus Selling Platform and Hotel Plus tools. Travelodge aims to double its number of properties by 2020.
• Tnooz-Tealeaf FREE Webinar: Understanding the challenges of the multi-channel travel booker
• Airports – the new frontier for travel loyalty services
• Middle East hotel prices – January to March 2012

Thursday 5 January 2012:

• Big Data and the infinite possibilities for the travel industry
• What else? Web usage report, AMR delisted, ARC chairman, Cheapflights ticked off
• Why you need to care about travel technology, semantic web and ontology

Tuesday 3 January 2012:

• Amadeus launches Hotel Optimisation Package system for leisure and business travel agencies. The system has a number of services including the LinkHotel service, 50,000 properties from the likes of Transhotel, as well as a multi-GDS Business Intelligence platform to handle pricing and contracting with hotels.
• Travelport makes changes to Agility package for agencies in Americas
• Travel technology in 2011 – most popular, most commented and other highlights on Tnooz
• Big shuffle in the world of hotel marketing and distribution in 2012

NB: Image via Shutterstock.

Previous GDS updates:

• GDS news from Travelport, Amadeus, Sabre, Abacus – December 2011
• GDS news from Travelport, Amadeus, Sabre, Abacus – November 2011
• GDS news from Travelport, Amadeus, Sabre, Abacus – October 2011
• GDS news from Travelport, Amadeus, Sabre, Abacus – September 2011
• GDS news: Travelport, Amadeus, Sabre, Abacus – August 2011
• GDS news: Travelport, Amadeus, Sabre, Abacus – July 2011
• Travelport, Amadeus, Sabre, Abacus briefs – June 2011
• Travelport, Amadeus, Sabre, Abacus briefs – May 2011
• Travelport, Amadeus, Sabre, Abacus briefs – April 2011
• Travelport, Amadeus, Sabre, Abacus briefs – March 2011
• Travelport, Amadeus, Sabre, Abacus briefs – February 2011
• Travelport, Amadeus, Sabre, Abacus briefs – January 2011
• Travelport, Amadeus, Sabre, Abacus briefs – December 2010
• GDS Bitesize – January 2010 to November 2010

It stands for global retailing system as the technology giants push further into the world of airline ancillaries.

Amadeus now has 17 airlines signed up to its Amadeus Airlines Ancillary Solution, 12 are European carriers.

Perhaps Ggggrrr would be more appropriate as a mark of the frustration many are feeling when confronted with prompts, tick boxes and questions about things they shouldn’t be charged for separately or don’t really want.

The GDS aren’t to blame, they’re just taking advantage of the potential revenue opportunity if they can deliver technology to help airlines unbundle the various elements (read, add value) in getting from A to B and back again.

And the revenue opportunities are very real if a report by IdeaWorks for Amadeus, which reveals that ancillary revenue hit $32.5 billion in 2011, up 43% on the year before, is to be believed.

The context of this post is twofold:

• Two recent flight bookings have thrown up two very different experiences – one with a tour operator airline (never used before, likely to avoid in future) which seemed to make a point of flagging up additional (but not optional) charges and the other with a scheduled airline which is now including everything in the price.
• The second is a discussion during an Open Travel/Travel Technology Initiative session back in November at World Travel Market centred on the impact of Google on the airline distribution landscape.

There was no doubt from the panel, that airlines need to do better in their CRM efforts, but as Timothy O’Neill Dunne of T2 Impact (and a Tnooz node) pointed out, Google has the advantage in that it knows so much more about the context of a consumer’s search.

A quick discussion with Amadeus distribution director David Doctor last week on the evolution of airline ancillaries reveals a view that as long as airlines ensure transparency and improve usability, customers will understand and be more accepting of the process.

The context of search idea was also mulled over during the conversation and while Doctor pointed to strides made by airlines in using their frequent flier knowledge to improve personalisation, whether airlines could ever really hone in on individuals wants and needs is highly debatable.

Here’s a very naive approach – when airlines are gathering all that customer information about our search and buying habits why not fire passengers a quick email and ask them if they want or need the ancillaries.

This would not necessarily have to be right down to an individual level, it could be done by groups of customers with similar habits.

It could be a win-win approach – airlines would get even more information on customer likes and dislikes and have another opportunity to sell to them and customers might feel a bit less aggrieved and a bit more valued.

A proportion of people will want to buy additional services and be prepared to pay. For everything else, i.e. elements that they see as being part of flying from A to B – just include it in the price. Otherwise, it seems like, well, lipstick on a pig.

For the next three years Amadeus and others will continue to invest in and focus on shopping and merchandising technology and says Doctor, airlines will continue to push ancillaries as long as customers adopt them. He also maintains the sector will respond to any backlash.

“We’re seeing a typical learning phase so things that bring value to customers is what you will see. The number one thing is information about the customer. It requires changing the way you address the market, calling them customers instead of passengers, some early adopters are doing really well.”

So, what next in the evolution of ancillaries – hotels where you’re charged for your sheets? Not just a pillow menu but an a la carte pricing one or perhaps a non-negotiable fee for a hot shower?

NB: Image via Shutterstock

The outage lasted a number of hours and hit passenger self check-in and reservation systems, agency bookings as well as airport counter systems.

Reports say British Airways, Qantas, Iberia and Cathay Pacific are among the airlines hit by the system failure.

In short: it could be the double whammy of a distribution service and airline IT collapse.

At around 2000 CET (1300 EST), Amadeus released a statement to confirm that all airline systems are restored.

“Some travel agency customers may continue to experience service disruption which we are investigating. We regret any inconvenience this may have caused.”

Amadeus says a detailed explanation as to what happened and which airlines were affected will be released in due course.

The problem is the second in as many months for Amadeus, after seeing Qantas hit by a major outage in December when passengers were unable to check-in with the airline for a number of hours in December last year.

More to follow…

NB: Image via Shutterstock.

In addition, FairSearch contends that Google Flight Search may be moving toward a CPA (cost per acquisition) advertising model, which allegedly could be anticompetitive.

ITSA is a travel trade group representing major global distribution systems and online travel agencies, including Amadeus, Travelport, Orbitz and Priceline, all of which sat on the fence (publicly, at least) during last year’s US Department of Justice antitrust review of Google’s now-consummated acquisition of ITA Software.

But, ITSA’s joining the anti-Google forces signals growing unease in the GDS and OTA sectors as the latter so far have been largely shut out of Google’s flight metasearch solution.

Brian Ek, Priceline spokesman, says “ITSA’s joining was discussed with ITSA membership and we supported it.”

That statement is a far cry from past comments by Jeffery Boyd, CEO of major Google customer Priceline, arguing that Google Flight Search would be likely to deliver more qualified leads to the OTA and thus could be beneficial.

When asked about ITSA’s new membership in FairSearch, Orbitz spokesman Chris Chiames played both sides of the street.

“We are still evaluating our options with regard to FairSearch,” Chiames says, “but are supportive of ITSA’s participation on behalf of the industry.”

And, asked whether ITSA’s new FairSearch ties mean Travelport is now joining the anti-Google forces, too, Travelport spokeswoman Jill Brenner stopped short of expressing that sentiment.

“ITSA is involved in many issues, and not all member companies agree on all issues all of the time,” Brenner says. “We continue to monitor Google in the space and welcome all new entrants, as long as there is a level playing field.”

Until now, FairSearch members included Microsoft, Kayak, Expedia, Sabre/Travelocity, TripAdvisor and others. In addition to ITSA, FairSearch now counts adMarketplace, Twenga and ShopCity.com as new members.

The lobbying organization — FairSearch, that is — is trying to keep a lot of heat on Google, with activities ranging from an ad campaign to blog posts and a position paper, Google Flights Search: Is Google Keeping Its Promises on ITA Software?

In the paper, FairSearch claims Google Flight Search may be violating consumer protection laws by failing to adequately to disclose airline code-sharing arrangements and bag fees.

A Google spokesman declined to comment on this issue.

In addition, FairSearch argues that Google Flight Search may be moving toward a CPA (cost per acquisition) model with airlines in which Google would receive a percentage of ticket sales.

“And, if Flight Search ads are being sold as CPA units, then Google benefits when consumers pay more for airfare,” the FairSearch paper contends.

And, by extension, this line of reasoning also holds that it would be in Google’s interest to fill its Google Flight Search pages with its own CPA-based product and to exclude less lucrative CPC links to OTA sites and those of other advertisers.

There are some possible gaps in these arguments, however.

First, FairSearch member Kayak uses the CPA model for a portion of its business. Kayak notes in its IPO filings that it uses both the CPC model for referrals to OTA and supplier sites, and the CPA model when consumers book on Kayak.com.

And, second, would Google really have an incentive to show higher airfares than the competition even if Google theoretically was taking in greater revenue using the CPA model?

Who would want to book these flights if lower fares would be available on competitors’ websites? Displaying higher airfares wouldn’t be a marketshare play for Google Flight Search.

FairSearch’s theories on Google using the CPA model — or how Google would use the CPA model — likely are speculation because it doesn’t seem like final decisions have been made.

Google is experimenting with various monetization modes on Google Flight Search, says a spokesman, who declined to get into any detail.

All concerned realize that Google will eventually monetize Google Flight Search pages in a variety of ways.

It is not difficult to envision sponsored ads framing the core flight search links in Google Flight Search before long.

And, if Google does opt for a CPA model for its airline booking links, would it be set in stone that Google would receive one flat percentage rate based on the ticket price?

Perhaps the CPA percentage rates could be tiered or, then again, maybe in some scenarios Google could charge a flat fee regardless of the ticket price.

And, what if Google decided to charge a lower CPA percentage rate for popular routes based on greater volumes of ticket purchases?

Might that even be financially beneficial for Google and consumer-friendly?

FairSearch does raise a valid point regarding Google’s statement during the regulatory process that Google Flight Search would benefit the entire travel ecosystem. Google stated at the time:

The acquisition will benefit passengers, airlines and online travel agencies by making it easier for users to comparison shop for flights and airfares and by driving more potential customers to airlines’ and online travel agencies’ websites.

But,  online travel agencies have been relegated to links on the bottom of Google Flight Search pages for now.

Google insists that it wants greater OTA participation in Google Flight Search, but that the airlines have stomped their feet, protesting that OTAs are not welcome dance partners.

Regarding dance partners of the business variety, one thing is clear — Google and FairSearch will not be whispering sweet-nothings to each other any time soon.

There is a certain helplessness creeping in around online hotel distribution which is worrying hotels in Europe and worldwide.

In recent weeks, Germany’s market leader HRS increased commission fees by more than 15 %, just two months after acquiring Hotel.de, the number three in the German market.

Simultaneously the screws were tightened in a frightening manner as rate- and availability-parity clauses applicable throughout all (!) online and offline distributions channels were inserted into the terms and conditions.

Now we are not talking only about last room availability, but we are confronted with anytime-access to the entire hotel inventory, a veritable product-parity.

Since then there has been increased murmurings in the discussion forums and chat rooms of the hotel industry.

For the sake of fairness, it should be mentioned that HRS also announced an automatic GDS-connection via Amadeus for HRS hotels, including a flat fee.

This particular booking portal’s power and the eventual dependency of hotel businesses on it raise fundamental questions.

Why couldn’t the hotel industry oppose these mechanisms of online distribution in time, and why did it leave the increasingly one-sided booking conditions in place?

At least in Europe the cause lies in the conditions of the market, where a constantly narrowing oligopoly on the side of the supplier faces a fragmented hotel sector.

As a consequence, unfair market practices are established which the hotel industry can barely defend itself. In economics this effect is known as The Prisoner’s Dilemma.

What is the way out?

Sure, every hotel has a whole lot of homework to do to strengthen its direct bookings via its own website.

Hotel associations inform their members and give a wide variety of help with direct-booking strategies, hotel reviews, content, customer loyalty, context and search engine optimization.

The development of a booking system belonging to the hotel industry is hardly the tool of choice due to the market and painful experiences of the past, no matter how promising new approaches, such as RoomKey, may sound.

And also Google will not incorporate the heroic epic of the so-called White Knight into its repertoire.

But how can the markets be held open in the medium and long term?

The hotel industry must have a vital interest in preventing monopolies in the growing markets of online travel agents, hotel review sites and search engines.

For this the barriers to entry for third parties such as agencies, app-developers, booking service providers, channel managers, online-merchants, search engines, think tanks outside the industry, garage startups and any other market participant, must be kept as low as possible.

This enables real and latent competitive pressure to be generated though alternatives, which sustainably prevents monopoly rents from being siphoned.

This allocation of industry know-how must be perceived and organised as a public good, the use of which is accessible to the general public at a low cost, or for free.

Why don’t we, as an industry, combining our knowledge and expertise, build a comprehensive hotel database – a worldwide Hotelwiki?

It would include unique global identifiers, address data, GPS-coordinates, photos, videos and in particular deep links to the favourite booking page of each hotel would have to be added and inserted there.

This project could be cast in the shape of a foundation. Or it could be built up from already existing industry initiatives such as Dothotel, HEDNA, HFTP, HTNG, OpenTravel Alliance, RoomKey or TTI, you name it.

Who takes the lead is secondary in the end. We need this industry’s joint show of strength – worldwide, undistorted, neutral.

It’s time for a Hotelwiki!

NB: This is a guest article by Markus Luthe, CEO of the German Hotel Association.

NB2: Images via Shutterstock.

Amadeus has its main data centre in Erding, Germany, while Sabre and Travelport‘s are located in the US cities of Tulsa and Atlanta respectively.

Protected like a military establishment, vital given the type of sensitive information running through its digital arteries, Travelport’s Data Center is housed in a rather ugly building (it doesn’t need to be pretty) on the outskirts of the city, close to Hartsfield-Jackson Airport.

The drabness of the exterior masks what is going on inside – over 7,000 physical and virtual servers, for example, are running the travel shopping systems, while eight IBM mainframes are capable of crunching 60,000 million instructions per second.

The facility is mirrored – meaning that there is a double the amount of every piece of hardware to ensure that if something goes wrong, there is a backup of all the data, including passenger name records, fares, routes, availability, etc.

Other factoids chief technology officer David Lauderdale, Travelport’s chief technology officer, likes to throw out on tours of the venue include:

• 35 million+ lines of code supporting the systems.
• More than 9 petabytes of shared data storage.
• 37,000 messages are processed every second.
• Response times for agency customers and the airlines hosted by Travelport are typically less than 300 milliseconds.

The facility contains a dizzying array of different types of technology, each piece of which is replaced or upgraded every 18 months.

The largest hardware project in recent years, Lauderdale explains, was when the company brought its Galileo and Worldspan data centres together under one roof (beginning in 2008) following the acquisition of Worldspan. Galileo was previously located in Denver, Colorado.

The migration was named by Information Week as one of the largest IT project in the US at the time.

But it is control centre which takes the breath away, a moment saved by Lauderdale with a dramatic opening of curtains surrounding a room known as the fishbowl.

The control centre is staffed by just seven people working in three shifts, 24 hours a day. Every piece of kit is monitored constantly for traffic fluctuations, errors and other issues affecting customers.

It is (no hyperbole here) like mission control at Nasa.

Rooms and More, which eventually will be integrated into Travelport’s Universal Desktop, is a travel agency site which looks in some ways like a typical metasearch site, although the agents don’t get shuffled off to the aggregator sites to complete their bookings. Travelport acquired hotel metasearch engine Sprice in May 2010, and it provides much of the foundation for Rooms and More.

Some 6,400 travel agents in 70 markets are currently using Rooms and More so it hardly is a major booking channel for Booking.com, Agoda and the Expedia Affiliate Network so far.

But, it is interesting to see how these hotel aggregators, along with the likes of Miki Travel, Hotels.com, Grupo TransHotel, Medhotels, Hostelworld and others are competing for travel agency bookings. Travelport has a dozen aggregators in Rooms and More, with about 18 others signed up for implementation.

Niklas Andreen, Travelport GDS’ group vice president, hospitality and partner marketing, estimates that Rooms and More has 200,000 to 300,000 of an estimated half a million hotels around the world in the system.

It is difficult to give a precise count of how many hotels are represented because the providers often have overlapping inventory, he says.

The hotel providers compete for travel agency bookings based on whether they offer pre-pay or post-pay models etc. and their varying commissions.

Travel agents search for hotels and then see an array of offers from the providers with divergent commission specified.

For example, today in the US market on Rooms and More, Miki Travel was offering 12% commission, TransHotel (12%), Expedia Affiliate Network (10%), Hotels.com (10%), Booking.com (5.5%), and Agoda (4.5%).

It is likely that a company such as Expedia, which deals in so much merchant hotel inventory, could afford to pay a higher commission than Booking.com, for instance, which largely deals in the retail or agency model.

Travelport negotiates the commissions, which are subject to change by market, timeframe, availability and other factors, with each provider.

All of this inventory is accessed through the Travelport Universal API, but the aggregators also compete against chain hotels offered through the Travelport GDS, which lists commissions ranging from 0% to 12%.

Agents select an inventory provider, which is the merchant of record, and then Travelport sends the credit card details to the aggregator, which confirms the bookings and sends a voucher to the agency or traveler. Travelport collects all the commissions for the agencies.

The user experience for the travel agent is similar to traditional metasearch, although all of the bookings take place within Rooms and More instead of on sites such as Expedia or Booking.com.

Andreen refers to the experience as “meta-book.”

Also along the lines of a consumer experience, travel agents using Rooms and More get access to consumer-written hotel reviews about each property from sites such as TripAdvisor, Yahoo Travel, AOL and others.

With some travel agents disparaging what they consider to be amateurish user-generated content, it is interesting to see many of them are accessing consumer reviews in Rooms and More.

Keith Harrison, global head of hospitality sales for Travelport, says agents often access the user reviews when the property or destination is unfamiliar.

And, Andreen says Travelport is in discussions with professional review providers to add them to Rooms and More, as well.

Note: The author took part in a Travelport-sponsored press event in Atlanta.

The company will consider an IPO “as and when the markets are right”, president and CEO Gordon Wilson confirms, acknowledging that its current private equity owners Blackstone, One Equity Partners and Technology Crossover Ventures will be looking for an exit in the future and a public listing is one option available to it.

Travelport’s last attempt at a public listing began almost two years ago to the day, when it filed documents at the London Stock Exchange, ahead of a similar move in Spain for fellow GDS giant Amadeus.

The plan was scrapped just three weeks later after some European markets started to show signs of weakness as financial problems hit countries such as Greece.

Amadeus eventually proceeded with its IPO in Madrid in April of the same year.

But with Sabre also recently suggesting it would consider a public listing at some point, something Wilson says he would welcome and consider good for the sector, attention is inevitably turning once again to Travelport’s next move.

Such talk is a far cry from just four months ago when Travelport was on the brink of a forced entry into Chapter 11 as it attempted to extend the terms of its debt repayment plan.

It eventually secured – via its parent company Travelport Holdings – an agreement to delay the PIK loan repayment until 2016, a move which Wilson says has “liberated” the business.

“I am no longer talking to them [investors] about the PIK – the debt is behind us,” he says, outlining how the refinancing gave the company some capital for investment in product and services, as well as for potential small acquisitions.

Meanwhile, chief operating officer Kurt Ekert says some lessons have been learned from its recent attempt to launch a new agent desktop platform and introduce fees for services.

Travelport altered some of the terms for its Agility programme in the Americas following an outcry from some agency groups in the US and Canada.

Ekert says the changes were made following “feedback from customers”, but admits with hindsight that they should have been more pro-active with agents (“we would have gotten there first with the new product”) before announcing the introduction of fees.

“We allowed the conversation to be about commercials, when the intent for us was that it was supposed to be about technology,” he says.

However, Ekert believes that its decision to launch the Agility bundle is a sound one and has the right motivation behind it.

He adds: ”We think it is important to pull customers along with new technology, because it is hard to get people to change.”

NB: Image via Shutterstock.

And, does Travelport, in particular, have juice?

Mark Ryan, Travelport’s chief information officer, argues that there has been a cultural transformation at the company over the last few years and that Travelport now wreaks of coolness.

Some 20% of the GDS staff was replaced through “attrition” over the last few years, and Ryan says he’s hired people with expertise in things such as system architecture and Big Data.

“We are embracing change,” says Ryan, who landed at Travelport in June 2009 after working for IBM, eBay, Vodafone, Weather.com and most recently Matria Healthcare in Atlanta. “The whole organization says it’s great to be cool again.”

OK, talking about GDSs being cool may elicit well-deserved groans from critics.

But, Ryan is not backing down from the boast.

“I don’t want my technology guys to be bits and bytes guys,” Ryan insists.

Instead, he wants the geeks at Travelport to focus on the user experience, just as some travel agents are doing, he says, by not just selling flights, “but enabling the journey.”

And, yes, it can be debated whether Travelport has momentum or not, but it undeniably has “juice” — in the form of the Travelport Juice Lab, a development and testing facility in Denver.

Ryan oversees development hubs in Denver; Atlanta; Kansas City; Langley, UK, as well as a joint venture technology enterprise in Delhi, India.

His marching orders are: “Fail fast, fail often and learn faster than the competition.”

With all of that data at the company’s disposal, Ryan says the GDS is in the process of enabling travel agents in different regions to tailor flight sales to the differentiated ways passengers in particular markets tend to feel about layovers.

And, a mobile app for ViewTrip, Travelport’s largely static itinerary management service, is coming “soon,” Ryan says.

Clearly, this is a GDS version of cool which Ryan has in mind — bringing in new technologies and skills to modernize the services which travel agents receive and offer to their customers.

Consider ViewTrip, which currently isn’t very mobile or social. Marketed by travel agencies to their clients, the functionality of Travelport ViewTrip seemingly is light years behind consumer-oriented itinerary management services from TripIt and WorldMate, for instance.

ViewTrip has a long way to go even get into the conversation.

And, then one of the things that the Juice Lab is working on is a way to deliver flight alerts through ViewTrip to travelers — and that’s a functionality that Travelport-controlled Orbitz has been offering to consumers for about a decade.

Ryan also is proud of Travelport’s new Universal Desktop, which he feels has more juice and  cool than, as other Travelport officials refer to it, “a re-skinned desktop,” which is their not-so-veiled reference to the Sabre Red Workspace.

Ryan argues that the Univeral Desktop is cool because of things like its queue management features, its workflow, and purported capacity to take new travel agency employees and train them on the desktop within four days.

This helps travel agency managers cope with the costs of educating a new agent and softens the productivity hit when a veteran agent leaves, Ryan says.

Sabre and Amadeus, too, of course, might offer different perspectives on whether Travelport’s tech is cool or not-so-cool.

But, Ryan says he doesn’t care what Sabre or Amadeus thinks.

“I disallow my guys to look at the competition,” Ryan says. “I want them to lead.”

Those are indeed the marching orders.

Note: The author took part in a Travelport-sponsored press event in Atlanta.

The deal will see 250,000 hotels from HRS made available via Amadeus e-Travel Management corporate booking tool as well as the Amadeus Selling Platform for travel agencies.

The partnership, which Amadeus is describing as a ‘landmark agreement’, will provide access to the additional hotel content to agencies and corporate bookers by the second quarter of this year.

The deal includes 50,000 independent hotels, a segment which GDSs have traditionally struggled to offer forcing the business travel community to shop around online.

The independent properties are said to be currently distributed exclusively through HRS.

In October, Travelport unveiled a deal to add independent properties to its Travelport Rooms And More service via a deal with France-based Fastbooking.

A year ago Travelport also signed an agreement to offer Hotelzon‘s 100,000 properties to agents via its Universal API.

In October Amadeus revealed that it was working on advanced search technology for hotels, similar to that released for flights in 2009.

The GDS also said it was working to integrate more hotel aggregators in the back-end which would sit alongside traditional GDS hotel content.

That was one of the data points that could be extrapolated from TravelClick’s latest North America Distribution Review, covering the third quarter of 2011, the latest statistics available.

Brand.com’s room nights sold increased about 6.1% during the third quarter, compared with the same period in 2010.

And, Tim Hart, TravelClick’s executive vice president of business intelligence solutions, says much of these gains came from the chain’s own voice channels (their toll-free phone lines), which saw about a 2% decline in room nights sold.

“The dominant dynamic is that people who are picking up a phone are going online,” Hart says. “The primary direction they are going is brand.com. That is exactly what they want to see happen. That [the hotel website] is going to be the lowest-cost channel they operate.”

For the record, online travel agency room nights climbed about 5%, the travel agency channel through GDSs increased 4%, the direct channel (the property’s own phone lines, walk-ins and emails to the property) notched 1% ahead, and room-night grown overall in TravelClick’s top 25 North America markets grew around 3%.

The roughly 5% room-night growth for the OTA channel in the third quarter was not necessarily a bad thing for the hotels even though it is a higher-cost channel than brand.com, Hart says.

That’s because OTA ADRS (average daily rates) climbed about 12% to around $110, Hart says.

What that means is that hotels were easing up on discounting through Priceline and Hotwire,  and in air-hotel packages, and promotions on other OTA sites, Hart says.

“The OTAs continue to deliver good volumes to the hotel at a much higher rate so that continues to be a positive story,” Hart says.

“Clearly, it’s a high-cost channel, but the OTAs are delivering important guests into the mix for hotels,” Hart says, adding that the OTAs sometimes reach a customer base that the hotels themselves aren’t touching.

Hotels get much higher rates, on average, through brand.com ($140), voice ($145) and GDS/travel agencies ($155), Hart says.

One shocker about the latest TravelClick numbers:  the largest channel for hotels in the third quarter was the “direct channel” (property phone lines, walk-in and emails to properties), which accounted for about a 27% share of room nights sold.

Hart surmises that mid-level hotels probably drive this portion of the business.

The percentages of room night sold for the remaining channels in the third quarter were: brand.com (25.4%), GDS/travel agencies (18.5%), chains’ toll-free numbers (17.2%) and OTAs (12.4%).

The trial in the district court of Tarrant County, Texas, is now slated to kick off on August 6, 2012, instead of the previously slated date, June 13, 2012.

The effect of the ruling is that the truce in the airline-GDS war will remain in effect for a couple of months longer.

American Airlines and Sabre have been battling on the legal front over antitrust issues, and in the marketplace over a new contract, distribution economics and direct-connect.

Sabre issued a statement about Judge Donald Crosby’s extension ruling, noting that the GDS vendors’ travel agency and corporate customers, as well as consumers using sites such as Travelocity, will have access to American Airlines’ fares through the end of the trial.

Sabre spokeswoman Nancy St. Pierre adds:

  We are disappointed with the extension, as it yet again delays the long-term certainty Sabre’s agency and corporate customers have told us is important and which we are dedicated to achieving. It’s unfortunate that AA has chosen a path of litigation with Sabre, particularly since the airline is now focused on its bankruptcy. Our preference is to negotiate with AA and we continue to call on the airline to work with us to reach a deal that meets the needs of all constituents.

In turn, American Airlines states:

American has always been open to resolving our disputes and entering into a fair, new agreement with Sabre through negotiations. Despite American’s past efforts, we have not been able to reach such a resolution. Because we have discovered that Sabre engaged in serious misconduct in violation of the antitrust laws, however, we intend to pursue our losses, absent an agreed resolution. This is just a brief extension, but it is important to give American breathing room to focus on both its successful restructuring efforts and this lawsuit. As a reminder, American’s current distribution agreement with Sabre will remain in effect until 14 days after the conclusion of the Texas antitrust lawsuit.