KYTE
CEO: Alice Ferrari
Headquarters: London
Founded: 2019
When Ryanair content vanished from content aggregator
Travelfusion in late 2023—causing the low-cost carrier's content to in turn vanish
from Concur and the agencies that relied on Travelfusion for Ryanair
content—Alice Ferrari, CEO and co-founder of Kyte, saw an opportunity.
While Ryanair has limited relationships with global
distribution systems, it's publicly been an "up and down
relationship," and Ferrari used the moment to have a conversation with
Ryanair on why the carrier should try API distribution, which was "much
more suited for their business model," she said. Ryanair, which typically
had eschewed relationships with aggregators, Ferrari and her team were able to
convince the carrier to
become a partner, with Kyte connecting the carrier to corporate travel
sellers as well as offline and smaller agencies.
For Kyte, the big win was not just convincing Ryanair to try
a new distribution model.
"Building a connection with Ryanair really crystalized
our position in the market," Ferrari said. "It set us in a part of
the industry we really wanted to go into anyway."
Founded in 2019, Kyte's stated mission has been to
"reimagine distribution" for airlines—full-service and LCC alike—and
travel sellers, connecting them with a standardized API integration that cuts
down on the time needed to establish such a connection. That has included work
with New Distribution Capability. Air Canada, for example,
in 2023 partnered with Kyte to enable a direct API connection to its NDC
content.
Formerly with EasyJet—also now a Kyte partner—Ferrari said
LCCs have "always been in my DNA," and she sees Kyte as
well-positioned to become the go-to distributor for LCCs wanting to reach the
corporate market, particularly as their models evolve. As LCCs like EasyJet and
Ryanair have grown into massive carriers serving hundreds of millions of
passengers per year, they need to expand beyond their core market, and the
corporate market can be a lucrative one, she said. But even carriers with high
brand recognition will have a hard time garnering significant corporate
business without a third-party getting their content to key corporate travel
sellers.
"If they invest in the cost of distribution, it pays
off through higher yielding fares," Ferrari said. "We've seen a lot
of corporate sellers that have as a policy that they have to book a certain
type of bundle that will include all these ancillaries, whether the customer
needs them or not. For a low-cost carrier, it's fantastic news, because they
get that extra revenue and they don't always have to deliver that
service."
The corporate travel market, "is increasingly looking
to the LCC market" as it grows. Business located in secondary or tertiary
cities that aren't as easily able to use legacy carrier hub-and-spoke models
especially need the access, she said.
The GDS model, Ferrari said, "doesn't really
align" with the typical LCC business model, as they tend to have much
lower margins and even a cost of a dollar or two per segment is too detrimental
to the bottom line with an added surcharge for the carrier.
Other third-party distributors for LCC content have
struggled as their needs have become more complex, she said. EasyJet, for
example, is among of the low-cost carriers that have introduced flexibility
that requires post-ticketing servicing, which can be accomplished through
Kyte's API. Other LCCs have adopted NDC.
With more LCC connections forthcoming, Kyte has found itself
as the chosen partner even of some of its fellow aggregators who concentrate
largely on NDC as a supplemental provider for LCC content. Both TPConnects,
which is majority-owned by Flight Centre Travel Group, and PKFare
selected Kyte as a content provider for LCCs. There have been discussions of
partnering with GDSs as well, she said.
In addition, Spotnana
connects to Kyte's API for LCC content.
Kyte to date has completed three funding rounds, the most
recent a few months ago led by venture capital firm Outsiders Fund, but it is
kept it core employee team, consisting largely of senior engineers. "When
there's agility work we need to do, we tap other resources, but a small core
team allows us to move fast and make decisions quickly," Ferrari said.
LCCs will remain Kyte's focus for the next few years as it
seeks to become "the number one low-cost distribution provider in the
industry for APIs," she said. Beyond that, Kyte aims to support 50 percent
of the airline industry by 2030—by a degree of NDC and LCC connections—and also
plans to use the data it accumulates to help airlines build data-based sales
strategies, according to Ferrari.
Building beneficial relationships with airlines—as evidenced
by winning over Ryanair—is why Ferrari has confidence in the growth over other
aggregation models that rely on scraping or other non-cooperative methods.
"Distribution is a realization of trust," Ferrari
said. "It is a commercial relationship, whether there is a payment or not,
and not every aggregator has a reputation to be trusted, especially in the
low-cost where, where third-party distribution is relatively new."