Kiu System Solutions Participated in IATA Offer & Orders Transformation Forum as Strategic Partner

Ezequiel Rozenberg, Operations Manager at Kiu, shares insights about a necessary evolution in the airline industry: the challenge of advancing and adopting a modern retail model like other global scale industries and businesses, which benefit both passenger and airline. 

The third forum of Offers & Orders Transformation, which took place in IATA’s offices in Geneva, welcomed over 120 participants from the industry. Key aspects to carry this transition to a model 100% based on Offers&Orders were discussed. Also, in the work sessions held, areas of improvement were identified, where definition of processes and standards are needed to move forward. 

A transformation is needed for a Modern Retail model to exist, and the way to achieve it is through  Airline Retailing

The fundamental aspect is placing the customer at the center of the shopping ecosystem (shop - order - pay), regardless of the channel being used. This approach was introduced with the NDC standard in the past few years. By making this change, the offers created by the airline can be directed and personalized, allowing an increase in revenue per PB, lowering distribution costs, and a better client experience by modernizing and simplifying processes.

Being in control of the shopping process from the beginning, enables the creation of new opportunities to create value in all points of contact with the passenger.  

• Differentiation of product
• Dynamic offers based on the context 
• Personalized offers based on profile and loyalty programmes
• Merchandising - Ancillaries and dynamic bundles 

Legacy distribution through GDS has limitations that do not allow for these opportunities  since the airline does not know who the passenger is from the beginning and, therefore, cannot react based on said input.

In order to conduct this transformation, IATA, together with an Airline Retailing Consortium and IT providers, has been pushing for the adoption of new standards, models, architectures and concepts that allow phasing out legacy elements of the industry such as Passenger Name Records (PNRs), E-Tickets (ETs), Electronic Miscellaneous Documents (EMDs) and moving beyond the traditional PSS to a platform based in ONE Order.

The airline industry has shown commitment to this change, and results for the first tests of these concepts have already been presented. However, this process takes time and adoption is not immediate. One pain point lies in the interline flow, where airlines coincide with the maintenance of a hybrid model (Legacy PSS/Orders) until their partners have adopted the Offers&Orders model. Furthermore, disruption management in interline scenarios is still under debate as to how it should be addressed.

Ezequiel Rozenberg, Operations Manager at Kiu System Solutions