ATPCO has created a new solution that will "dramatically increase" the speed with which airlines will be able to move toward dynamic offers, the company announced Thursday at its Elevate + TravelConnect conference in partnership with Airlines Reporting Corp. in Washington, D.C.
Dubbed Product Catalog, the solution is an electronic record of airline products and services that ATPCO can create for each airline client so that they "can differentiate offers beyond price," with more detail on offer attributes.
"Today, an airline can only sell what they send through ATPCO, and what they send is fully formed—the price, the attributes." ATPCO CEO Alex Zoghlin told BTN. "What we are doing with Product Catalog is we are breaking down all those component parts into their individual pieces, so that you can assemble them independently of having to file every possible permutation a customer may want."
The solution, which also can be used by sales channels, also will help move the industry toward building the framework necessary to achieve a goal that ATPCO set in October 2022 for airlines to dynamically generate 80 percent of offers sold by 2026.
Product Catalog was "created after months of industry collaboration in ATPCO's dynamic offers design team," which includes members from several of its airline and technology clients, and is currently in the proof-of-concept stage. ATPCO plans to build a Product Catalog for each of its 450 member airlines by the end of the year, Zoghlin said, adding that "this is a 2024 work, not a 'sometime in the future.' "
"Long-term, I think this is really good for corporate travel buyers. They will be able to procure exactly what they're looking for and might even be able to negotiate deals around attributes and things harder to do today," Zoghlin added. "Some airlines do file fares specific for corporations, but think about a Product Catalog world where I can create nearly a bespoke offering for your company that might be a unique offering." The catalog also could create different levels of offerings for travelers within the same company, he noted, based on whether the traveler is an executive or a conference attendee, for example.
The solution's first iteration is backwards-compatible, Zoghlin said: "We can take the fare filings you have right now, and we can create your Product Catalog for you," he said of airlines. " Then technology providers and others can take those and create dynamic offers on them. … But you can also take that Product Catalog and go backward and create fare filings. If you're an airline that is further ahead in dynamic offer creation, but you have a codeshare or [joint venture] partner not quite there, we can make the ecosystem still work, going backward and forward."
In other words, the product will work with both EDIFACT and New Distribution Capability channels, Zoghlin said. ATPCO also is working on another product that would allow carriers to file fares in global distribution systems after building them in their Product Catalog.
Multiple airlines have asked ATPCO if this new product means that they can train their fare-filing staff on Product Catalog and "not have them learn all the arcane fare rules," Zoghlin said. "That is exactly what we are saying. We can move beyond all the complicated rules. We think this is really good for even carriers that don't think or care about moving past traditional fare filings. We think this will be a simpler way to manage everything."