Developing technologies that solves the “nightmare of complexity” of B2B supplier payments is key to supporting airlines as they look to become tour operators and drive higher yields.
Charles Tandonnet, Travelsoft vice president of growth program, told the Airline and Travel Payments Summit B2B, the firm got into payments because it is a business critical area.
Today Travelsoft supports 43 airlines with their New Distribution Capability (NDC) connectivity and its engines transact 49 billion bookings a year equating to $70 billion worth of payments.
One of Travelsoft’s clients is easyJet Holidays, the tour operating arm of the low cost carrier that is credited with the airline’s success in diversifying away from selling purely low cost air product and achieving the sort of margins Online Travel Agents and tour operators enjoy.
Tandonnet said, due to the layers of consolidation in the travel supply chain, there is a “nightmare of complexity” behind the scenes.
Each consumer payment sparks multiple contracts with suppliers none of which are static and are changing all the time.
“There are thousands of people every day thinking about how they should pay their suppliers,” said Tandonnet.
“Then there’s reconciliation, looking at why they did not receive the right amount of payment. We try to make this much more visible.”
To address this Travelsoft has built an orchestration layer or “OTA-as-a-software” that manages the B2B payment flows that originate from a single booking on a consumer-facing website.
Tandonnet said he believes airlines are set become even more important in the leisure travel sector as they tap into established consolidators for package product to sell along with their blended fares.
“We really believe airlines are key players in the future to be tour operators and to be really efficient tour operators,” he said.
“Today it’s really simple to have access to hotels. It’s more and more simple to have access to activities and services around the trip.
“What’s the one service that makes any trip a bit different? It’s the flight. That’s why easyJet Holidays is so comfortable; they are going deep into that.”
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