The crisis has revealed the fundamental need for data sources changes, notably to support pricing strategy. Airline CEOs and Revenue Managers have repeatedly said that historical data no longer holds the same value as we are literally remaking history. Our airline customers made it clear that additional data sources experimented with during the crisis were here to stay and should be standardised. Raising the bar is not only an opportunity but a must to stay relevant.
An opportunity in NDC APIs
To date, 60 airlines are NDC certified according to IATA NDC Registry. One of the benefits for airlines of adopting NDC is the ability to do Dynamic Pricing, also referred to as Continuous Pricing. In short, dynamic pricing is a strategy for offering personalised fares to individual buyers based on their flight history and other information. Dynamic pricing gives airlines more flexibility to put together the offers and experiences customers want to buy. The XML standard allows airlines to build their own APIs and change prices independently, adding value to their offers and adjusting prices individually to each customer. By removing the barrier from their processes, airlines can increase their chances of driving more revenue to reinvest into their businesses.
As part of our agreement model with Airlines, Infare can extract data from selected –NDC APIs, returning a high quality of data, offering it as an alternative data source to customers. It represents one of the several investments we have ongoing, developing and incubating a series of initiatives to expand our offering on data types to provide you with a greater competitive edge.
More is more
As airfares consist of several components, the more data Airlines Revenue Managers can obtain on the components, the better they can refine their competitive pricing strategy and improve decision-making.
At Infare, we have enhanced our data depth during the crisis by storing and delivering up to four times more details. We are now filling in additional details, bringing major innovation to airline revenue management teams. We expect the data foundation to grow to over 100 billion records a day by including other data sources. And we are investing to make the result of all publicly available searches available to our customers, including shopping data.
The new normal shaped by the global aviation industry is raising the bar to another level, hence why at Infare, we are prioritising our investments in such a way. One thing is sure, Revenue Management will not look the same again. At Infare, we are not only ready for the challenge, but we have already embraced it fully and excited about the opportunities ahead.
