United Airlines and Sabre are working to enable the global distribution system's subscribers to upsell economy passengers to the carrier's Economy Plus cabin at the point of sale. Officials said the option would be available to Sabre-subscribing travel agencies in the first quarter of 2009.
The move makes United the first U.S. legacy carrier to take advantage of new GDS initiatives that enable merchandizing options at the point of sale. Most carriers thus far have assessed unbundling and upselling charges at the time of checkin, on the airplane or exclusively through their Web sites, which corporate travel buyers say makes their use difficult to track
(BTNonline, April 28).GDSs in the past year have stepped up efforts to make their merchandizing and shopping capabilities more in line with those that airlines deploy through their own channels
(BTNonline, July 23, 2007).Like many carriers, United earlier this year launched capabilities on its Web site to purchase such upgrades prior to travel. Those efforts have lagged in the GDS environment. Midwest Airlines this year unveiled a comparable program with Sabre to upsell customers who elect to pay more for its higher-tier Signature economy seat at the time of booking
(BTNonline, July 21)."We built the solution initially for Midwest so it could be further leveraged by additional carriers as they came into the fray, and United is the first to elect to do that," Sabre vice president of product marketing Kyle Moore said this month.
Moore noted that more carriers are working to launch their own upselling and unbundling initiatives through the GDS, anticipating a snowball effect and eventual tipping point for new capabilities. Likening the rollout process to that for direct connects several years ago, Moore said, "The first carrier you do, the implementation is long and arduous. The next one is less so, and the next one is less so, until you get to the point where it really does just become configurations and flip-of-the-switch stuff."
Still, Moore said carriers want different capabilities, precluding any one-size-fits-all approach. Moore said the GDS capabilities eventually would be as varied as the ancillary items carriers sell. "We will leverage the same capabilities to address not just seats, but ultimately baggage and lounge access and everything," Moore said.
During the Credit Suisse Global Airline Conference in New York this month, several legacy airlines, including American Airlines and US Airways, promised acceleration of the unbundling trend. United senior vice president and CFO Kathryn Mikells during the conference said seat upselling has been well received by customers, claiming through internal research that eight out of 10 passengers who upgrade to Premium Plus would do so again.
"The airline revenue model is clearly changing and unbundling is giving customers more choice," Mikells said, noting that further unbundled offerings through the GDS are in "the pipeline to be announced next year."
Sabre competitors Amadeus and Travelport GDS also are hard at work on offerings to enable new selling and shopping options. Travelport GDS in April announced the acquisition of some of G2 SwitchWorks' "software assets and intellectual property," which it planned to use to deliver a new platform for merchandizing, upselling and unbundling products and services.
Meanwhile, Amadeus this year also announced its work on the Airline Retailing Platform to deliver such capabilities to airlines and agents
(BTNonline, April 3).Amadeus executive vice president of commercial and recently appointed CEO David Jones said United's upselling initiative would be a good fit for their platform.
"One of the objectives of the Airline Retailing Platform is exactly to enable that type of upselling," Jones said, "so I think it makes a hell of a lot of sense."