During the last three plus years I’ve led ATPCO, I’ve been so proud of the work our team, the airlines, and the industry has done to continue to push toward the future of flight shopping. It makes me a little nostalgic about why an entity like ATPCO is so crucial to the industry and just how difficult the retailing and selling of flights can sometimes be.
Just like any other online retail category, flight shopping is built on content and data. This year, our industry will serve 9.7 billion airline passengers, the most since 2019. A person searches up to an average of 48 times across different airline and aggregator sites before purchasing a ticket. Consider the information that goes into creating every single flight shopping experience. Airlines and their partners need to provide accurate flight shopping information, of course, but they also need to provide competitive pricing, enticing ancillary offers, and upgrade information. Based on their daily online experiences, consumers expect all of this to be personalized and updated in real time.
The dynamic future of flight shopping
Getting the right offer to the right customer at the right time is about more than just the price. Known as personalization in retail marketing, delivering a “dynamic offer” to a flight shopper requires an airline or aggregator to understand as much about a shopper as possible so they can provide a relevant offer in return. It also requires airlines to have near-instant access to flight information, pricing, ancillary content, and fees to assemble that offer at the click of a button. A flight might be the most expensive purchase someone makes online in an entire year, and airlines want to deliver an experience that lives up to or exceeds customer expectations.
To deliver on these expectations, airlines need massive amounts of data storage and movement capabilities. Most airlines are not in the business of building these capabilities themselves. Enter ATPCO. We support the industry to enable modern retailing. ATPCO is committed to providing solutions across the offer and order life cycle to create a seamless shopping and booking experience for airline customers. Our products are designed to innovate in many ways, providing airlines with the tools to navigate between exploring new dynamic and adjusted pricing methods while being able to manage traditional static fares, because the industry will exist in both worlds for the foreseeable future.
If you look at our Community Participation airline membership program, it has grown exponentially since we launched in 2021. In fact, 440 airlines are now taking advantage of the multiple solutions we offer via the program, and ATPCO is continually expanding the benefits for our partner airlines. Earlier this year we added another tool to the mix, Architect Query, at no additional cost to members. Along with the growth we have seen in Community Participation, airlines implementing Branded Fares via ATPCO has now surpassed 285, a more than 225 percent increase since 2018.
Growth in our pricing products and solutions is showing no signs of slowing down. Our premier pricing tool Architect is now the fastest-growing DSS (Decision Support System) on the market, with 28 carriers using the tool to streamline their individual pricing strategies. More than 60 airlines have implemented Dual RBD, a way for carriers to manage more price points that support targeted pricing, a big stepping stone to advancing dynamic offers.
These growth numbers aren’t just braggadocio figures, but rather a proof point in ATPCO’s long story that we remain as committed to serving the airline industry today as we were yesterday and will be tomorrow. The value of our interoperability and network of scale is needed; I like to think of it as a rising tide lifting all boats. As each airline’s pricing strategy evolves over time, the core ATPCO solutions will continue to evolve as well, just as they have for decades. We recognize that each airline's path is distinct, marked by unique timelines, partnerships, and aspirations.
Making the transition to the new era of dynamic offers will require interoperability across these paths, fortified by the guardrails of industry standards. It is our mission to provide transparency as well as efficiency of scale, avoiding the pitfalls created with hundreds of one-off solutions that would make it incredibly cumbersome for the ecosystem to function—not to mention the increased costs of operating without a centralized distribution source. We passionately take on this responsibility entrusted to us.
Innovation for the future
What I have realized while at ATPCO is that the over 440 airlines we work with can rely on us to identify these interoperable solutions that benefit all customers equally. We enable the industry to accommodate regulatory changes consistently, to interact with multiple systems and platforms with a single integration, and to adhere to standards that ensure accurate data transfer. It is essential to work together to best serve the industry. And so, to ensure alignment across the industry, ATPCO actively works with all industry organizations. One notable area is our participation in IATA’s APMWG (Airline Product Management Working Group), where our Chief Architect co-leads a sub-group that focuses on defining Airline Profile, a new solution that will help optimize the dynamic offer shopping process.
As the company with the data that will fuel the future of dynamic offers, we’re constantly impressed by the innovation airlines exhibit to deliver better, more relevant offers and shopping experiences to their customers. Data-driven innovation is what ATPCO is all about. It’s why we acquired 3Victors last December, an AI company that delivers almost real-time insights to airlines. And I am proud to share that 3Victors was recently awarded AI company of the year by the TravelTech Breakthrough Awards Program.
Leading ATPCO has been eye-opening, especially in understanding the scale of work, the scope for innovation, and the fundamental need for an organization like ours. Our commitment to the industry remains constant, and my faith in our ability to deliver solutions that provide consumers with better flight shopping experiences is unwavering.
Want to see what I’ve written about here in action? Join us from 22 to 24 October in Istanbul for Focus Summit+.
Alex Zoghlin
