Sponsored Listings:
New distribution platforms being offered by metasearch site Skyscanner and merchandising content provider Routehappy could help shake up the way consumers purchase airline tickets.
Last summer, Skyscanner introduced an online, branded marketplace feature enabling shoppers to purchase airline tickets without exiting the Skyscanner site.
Participants in the marketplace thus far include Finnair, British Airways and the low-cost Singapore airline Scoot. In a traditional metasearch site, travelers select airfare and other product offerings on the site but then get shuttled to the actual vendor — for example, an airline website — to make the purchase.
With the Skyscanner direct-booking marketplace, customers instead stay within the site and make purchases on web pages with branded content provided by the airline. It offers a more seamless experience for the shopper, both on a desktop and on a mobile device, and opens the door to the possibility that one’s data could populate on purchases across numerous airlines rather than having to be re-entered on each airline’s site, said Skyscanner director of product Filip Filipov.
For airlines, the marketplace presents an opportunity to sell tickets and ancillaries in the same fashion that they do on their own sites while maintaining brand recognition.
“Quite simply, I believe it’s the future for airlines,” Skyscanner CEO Gareth Williams said in a recent white paper produced by the company.
Travel technology analyst Henry Harteveldt of Atmosphere Research Group used more measured words in an interview last week but said the direct-booking virtual marketplace that Skyscanner is developing represents a big step in the metasearch world.
“It creates a shared trust between Skyscanner, the consumer and the airline,” Harteveldt said.
Skyscanner is enabling its direct-booking marketplace gradually in countries around the world. Countries in which it is already enabled for participating carriers include the U.S., the U.K., Singapore, China, Russia and India. Skyscanner is in talks with a number of U.S. carriers, Filipov said.
Carriers participating in the marketplace have seen strong early results, Filipov said, though he did not provide specifics.
“We have seen 50% more conversions for certain partners,” he said.
Routehappy Hub is a platform that enables airlines to place photographs of product offerings, such as seats or food, onto metasearch sites, OTAs, airline websites and within the GDS.
Travelport gives airlines the opportunity to display such images with its Rich Content and Brand solution. But Routehappy director of business development Seth Anagnostis said his company is the only one providing a platform for airlines to display photographic content, called Universal Product Attributes, on search sites.
Routehappy Hub launched in December on the CheapTickets.com OTAs located in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland. Ten airlines are participating, including United, Air Canada, Lufthansa and Emirates. The platform will also be integrated into the Sabre Red Workspace in the coming months.
“The hotel industry does such a fantastic job showing what does the pool look like, what does the room look like from a variety of angles, but on a flight you can spend hundreds of dollars and yet you don’t know what the product looks like,” Anagnostis said in explaining the impetus behind Routehappy Hub.
Airlines can tailor their displays to include photos of a lie-flat seat or perhaps a special brand of coffee they offer. They can also match photos with flight times so that a coffee brand is displayed on a morning flight and a specialty cocktail is shown for one in the evening, Anagnostis said.
Harteveldt said that some airlines, including Air France and Air Canada, have made strides with product displays on their own websites in recent years.
Routehappy Hub, he said, will facilitate that process in various distribution platforms.
“They make it very simple and straightforward for an airline product manager to upload the product and publish it for a very clear catalog of what they have to offer,” Harteveldt said.
Sоurсе: travelweekly.com
