Australia’s national carrier Qantas has launched a new technology platform, Qantas Distribution Platform (QDP), to enable its trade partners to interact with its customers on a more personal level through enhancing the airline’s retailing, booking and servicing capabilities.

The QDP improves functionality of indirect agent channels by aligning them more closely with the capabilities currently available via qantas.com, making it easier for trade partners to sell the airline’s products and provide more seamless customer service.

The platform was developed in partnership with Farelogix Inc. and utilises IATA’s New Distribution Capability (NDC), the new industry standard. It has been certified to NDC Level 3, IATA’s highest certification.

Image source: PhocusWire

According to Qantas, its trade partners will now have access to richer content including images of cabins and meals and ability to book extras such as extra legroom seating. It will also provide Qantas Frequent Flyer information and tier status at the point of sale.

Vanessa Hudson, Qantas chief customer officer, said the platform was a key part of a broader digital evolution of the airline’s booking channels. “There have never been more ways for a customer to research and book their travel. We want to make the booking experience as seamless and enjoyable as possible, no matter their booking channel preference.”

Qantas’ trade partners can access the QDP either via approved partner connections, or directly by developing a connection to the airline’s NDC XML Application Program Interface (API).

Travelport, Serko and CTM are the early adopters of the platform. The airline is working closely with its other GDS and agency partners to adopt the new technology.

In a separate statement by Travelport, the company said the agreement with Qantas also includes distribution of the airline’ content via the Rich Content and Branding merchandising solution. Over 65,000 of Travelport-connected travel agencies globally now have access to Qantas’ booking and ancillary services.

Travelport is the first operator of a global distribution system to be granted the highest certification by IATA for its NDC airline distribution technology. The company said it is well-positioned to support the QDP and improve the flexibility of content distribution as the airline becomes one of the first to deploy NDC content later this year.

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Another iteration of Startup Knockdown was successfully concluded over the weekend and just like the past events, the Kolkata event received amazing response from all those who were a part of it. This time Startup Knockdown was hosted as a part of TTF Kolkata. The event brought together experts from the industry and some really interesting travel startups from the region. After listening through all the pitches and filtering through the finer details, the judges picked Airlines Technology and Izifiso to be the winners of the event.

Varun and Paras from Airlines Technology team collecting the award from Shivam Shah, Partner at Augment Ventures

Airlines Technology, a tech startup eyeing the global airline industry and holding huge growth potential, got the interest of judges. IATA introduced NDC to simplify how airline tickets are bought and to increase the value for airline equity investors. It can allow for a more transparent shopping experience where the customers will be able to customise their bookings quickly and airlines will be able to push suitable offers directly to the customer. Airlines Technology is focussed on NDC implementation and aggregation. Amadeus has offered them the opportunity to be a part of Amadeus Next.

Gopal, founder of Izifiso, collecting the award from Sanjiv Agarwal, Chairman, Fairfest Media Ltd

Izifiso, with its fresh idea and the promise of bringing education out of the books, was voted for by many of the judges. Izifizo is a platform that allows students and educational institutions to connect with domain experts for educational tours. During the pitch, Izifiso founder Gopal shared that there are many individuals with strong knowledge in certain domains and they often organise small scale tours to share the knowledge. People come to know about these tours either by word of mouth or by social media platforms like Facebook. However this limits the reach as often, these methods won’t allow reaching beyond the extended network of the organiser. Izifizo tries to address this by working with the organisers and offering them a platform that would give them wider reach with the right audience.

Highlights of Startup Knockdown Kolkata

That wasn’t all. Saumyajit Guha not only shared insights on the investment scenario in India but also invited two startups, Izifiso and Tramily for an elevated pitch session with Calcutta Angels Network. Ravi Ranjan from NASSCOM expressed interest in Izifiso.

The response we received from the startups as well as the audience was highly encouraging. The participants discussed the finer details of their businesses during one-on-one conversations with the judges and everyone had something to take back from the event. We would also like to thank our partners again for supporting the event. The team is now gearing up for the Hyderabad event which is scheduled for the coming Saturday (July 16, 2016). Entries close soon. For details on all the upcoming events, visit startupknockdown.travhq.com.

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The buzzword on IoT is a hard reality that seems to be finding itself more tangible in the airline industry. SITA published a report that highlighted the IT trends in the airline industry, how they are picking up, what is the future of IoT, and how the airlines would plan to employ them. A number of projects are being invested upon by the airlines such as queue lengths and time to gate, to passengers via mobile apps, and further down the line smartwatches. Roughly about 60% of airlines imagine the cyber security concern to be bigger and be taken as a business risk. Innovative projects are starting to take a larger slice with a particular focus on the mobile market making the apps a go-to technology for self-service, information or customer service.

The survey focused on realising that the cyber security is progressing amongst the airline industry with over 200 airlines adopting technologies in coming years to manage cyber risks that have doubled by the last year. Amongst other IoT investments, there has been a growing focus on the maintenance, development and innovation.

This year would see a gradual inclination towards the growing fondness of IoT. The initiative of fuel/ engine monitoring has seen the dawn. IoT connectivity is being deployed with a number of airlines showing interest in IoT gateway technologies like beacons and sensors to provide passenger information has grown sharply. Smart baggage tagging, single travel token and fuel engine monitoring respectively would be evaluated over the next three years.

On the wearable technology front, airlines are still catching up but slowly. Smartwatches and glasses seem to have more potential in the next five years than the present times. Similarly, single biometric travel token is expected to become a viable alternative to current passenger identity processes.

Cyber security has taken the lead in the list of major concerns for CIOs in the present times. More than 70% of airlines have beefed up education and training around cyber security and would be seen as a norm across all airlines in the next three years. Other initiatives that see adoption in the next three years would circle around cyber security’s software development, incident response, and intelligence analytics.

Connected aircraft has also seen a rise in demand as they are configured with advanced communication capabilities. The main benefit would be derived majorly from service improvement rather than passengers. Wi-Fi would replace IFE technology and enable connectivity on passenger’s own device.

Mobile has been defined as the solution to the conundrum. There has been observed a steady growth of mobile check-in and information services have seen enhancing mobile apps. More airlines are planning location-based smartphone and tablet services.

Also, China has come up as a potential market and the industry trends that engulf the entire nation seem to be scaling with time.

However major challenges that could be faced whilst airlines build momentum for IoT implementation are cost factor with over 53% of airlines cited it as a major concern. For passenger related projects, perceived invasion of passenger privacy was an IoT challenge to some degree.

As IoT has become a daily fair in our lives, airlines definitely don’t plan on being left behind. Find crunching numbers in the full report here.

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As the number of travellers booking online keeps increasing, innovators are trying to jump upon the opportunities that open up. Many of them have emerged to offer planning services and activities but we have come across a tech company trying to change how airline tickets are bought. Varun Bansal, a financial service profession with over a decade of experience in the industry, co-founded Airlines Technology. Airlines Technology is trying to increase the value in airline industry. We spoke with Varun to know more. Here is an edited excerpt from the conversation:

Varun Bansal, Director, Airlines Technology

What are the key challenges Airlines Technology is trying to address?

A recent IATA survey said, “Air transport continues to create tremendous value for its users, passengers and shippers, and others in the value chain but destroys value for its airline equity investors”.

This is the key challenge Airlines Technology (AT) is trying to address. Re-create value for airlines equity investors.

Airlines Technology is trying to break decades old monopoly and technical challenges of existing GDS systems. In existing closed environment, GDS charges heavy transaction fees without offering full variety of services to end consumer.

With NDC, it will be absolutely transparent shopping experience where customer will get to choose his preferred seats, meals etc then and there on travel agent portal. Airlines will be able to push offers like free upgrades, lounge access, limo pickup and many more things directly to end consumer. All this will happen at much lower transaction fees.

How do you think the rise of LCCs has changes airline industry in the recent years?

LCC’s have been welcome change. It has fulfilled dreams of many who wished to save travel time for business or leisure. It has connected short distances where traditional airlines could not fly viably. It’s so warm to see highly motivated and efficient crew (because of better incentive schemes) working.

LCC has not only given big push to travel volume but forced others to get competitive on prices.

NDC is said to open up a level playing field for carriers of all scale. How do you think it will turn out in the long run?

It will turn out very well in future. Customers will be directly connected with airlines. Due to direct connection, transaction charges of intermediately will fall. Big airlines will not be able to grab customers on brand value only. Consumer will be able to see array of services much before bookings. It opens up horizon of LCC, small and new players who wish to offer better services. Consumers will know what they will get.

What do have to say about the current state of GDS industry? How would this affect the GDS giants?

GDS today are huge and cash rich. All kinds of travel agents have huge loyalty towards them due to big kick backs GDS give from their revenue. Travel agents are most important link in reservation process. Customer comes to them for booking and ironically they are reluctant on NDC. Only reason for them for not willing to go to NDC is huge money they make from GDS.

It’s same condition where first people were reluctant to go to malls for shopping and then e-commerce. But technology like water makes it way in people lives eventually. NDC and its offerings will lure customer and slowly travel agents will be forced to adopt this. I feel it will be 3-5 years process but GDS will fade out eventually.

You can find more details about Airlines Technology here.

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