Across most of 2020, Amadeus’ priority has been to help our customers deal with the ongoing disruptions. At the same time, we continued where possible to keep up the momentum on forward-looking projects that are important for our customers and the wider travel community.
Digital retailing remains an area of priority and, specifically, initiatives around ONE Order.
ONE Order is an enabler of the airlines' retailing transformation to help increase sources of revenue, improve customer experience and optimize processes. The move to retailing is a fundamental transformation with changes in management of technology, business processes, sometimes the airline organization and the airline ecosystem. ONE Order is a natural extension of NDC, it will power the fulfilment, delivery and settlement of airline products.
ONE Order has only been a recognizable standard for a few years – it is still evolving, and, as things stand, there hasn’t been a ONE Order pilot project between a full-service carrier and a low-cost carrier until now.
That’s why we are extremely proud to have run the first successful pilot in production using NDC and ONE Order messaging. Together with Navitaire, an Amadeus company, we partnered with Singapore Airlines, Scoot, and the Accounting Centre of China Aviation, for a live pilot to test full interoperability between a full-service and low-cost carrier, using existing NDC standards and ONE Order protocols. Real bookings, real passengers, real transactions.
This exciting project is a continuity of apilot we delivered with British Airwaysback in 2017, using ONE Order delivery and accounting messages in a live production environment for a specific charter flight. The project was recognized by IATA as the first and only end-to-end ONE Order pilot in production with a real airline. Since then, bothAmadeus andNavitaire have beencertified as “ONE Order capable” by IATA .
While such nods of approval are welcome, the real excitement lies in what we can actually do with ONE Order and NDC, not only for our airline partners but also the wider industry. Interoperability between independent or affiliated full-service and low-cost carriers' systems could help stimulate demand and revenue to airlines’ recovery.
However, there is no travel industry without travelers. Travelers have clearly been hit hard by the pandemic and will have a changed set of priorities and preferences once they return to the skies. Some pre-COVID concerns will have been watered down, others intensified.
Specifically, the idea of a seamless journey will still resonate – a transparent shopping and seamless airport experience.
In today’s context, with limited availability of flights in comparison to 2019, travelers might need to make more connections to get from A to B – and potentially with additional stopovers and different airlines. Right now, the process is long: two or more booking references, two (or more) check-ins, bag drops, carousels, more than one payment, and three (or more) airports instead of two. Overall, more physical touchpoints mean a higher risk of exposure.
Before COVID-19, virtual interlining was already introduced, allowing online travel agencies and metasearch companies to display trips that would allow a traveler to self-connect between a full-service and low-cost carrier, integrated into one single transaction with one payment. It is a step forward, but true seamlessness remains elusive.
What travelers want is to check in bags at A and collect them at B without having to think about which airline is providing which part of the service, or to have to repeat baggage reclaim and check-in at the connecting airport.
The immediate aim was to simplify how airlines of different business models, namely a full-service carrier and a low-cost carrier using different PSSs – Amadeus Altéa (used by Singapore Airlines) and Navitaire New Skies (used by Scoot) – operate seamlessly with each other so that a passenger, booking A-to-B-via-C on two different carriers, ends up with a single order ID, makes a single payment and has a seamless connection.
On all measurables, the pilot was a success. We delivered a seamless experience for passengers, including a single customer reference, single payment, seamless delivery and through check-in. We also proved that airlines from different business models, such as low-cost and full-service carriers, can work together in a much simpler way using NDC and ONE Order.
As the successful pilot showed, we can – and should – do better for our travelers. Finding ways to put standards into practice and make the travel experience better will reap rewards not only for each travel player, but for the whole industry.
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