From covering the needs of the airline to making it work for travel sellers; why the PNR needs to evolve to be more traveler-centric
The PNR (Passenger Name Record) holds key booking details used by airlines. But to meet modern expectations, it must evolve to support travel seller and traveler needs
Last Christmas my wife and I started discussing the idea of moving to a new house. Our children are older and soon they’ll ride off into the sunset as they start their early adulthood. And even though we love our house, we realize that it’s no longer fit for our next chapter in life – one with more time for more frequent travels. Our house is old and requires regular maintenance, should we move to a smaller modern apartment which can easily accommodate prolonged vacancies, or should I modernize my current home? But we like our home and all its memories; so, the question is – which road do we take?
This is a similar type of debate I have with my colleagues when discussing what needs to happen with the PNR, and that we started to explore in our recent Modern Travel Retailing Report. Do we take old technology and build on top, or do we build something completely new that is fit for today’s purpose and withstands the needs to update easily in the future? We are entering a new chapter in travel as well, and through that, new needs emerge. Airlines are moving forward with their modern retailing initiatives and introducing ONE Order to simplify traveler records (i.e. PNRs, electronic ticketing, EMDs…) into a single source of truth in their systems. Amadeus handles this for them through Amadeus Nevio and Navitaire Stratos, powering next generation retailing technology for airlines. For travel sellers to be able to take advantage of NDC and the airline Order while ensuring business continuity during the transition phase, we’ve recently introduced Smart PNR, the first steps towards a multi-source booking record that will manage any type of content through any source or technology.
But this is only the beginning, and through my debates there are three recurring themes that my colleagues and I constantly come back to as to how the front-facing technologies are reshaping user experience, perception and interaction to help travel sellers servicing their travelers and why the PNR needs to change.
Theme 1: Increasing data flexibility
As airlines modernize their retailing and move toward concepts like ONE Order, the data associated with each traveler journey is becoming richer. The traditional PNR, built around airline-centric codes and structures, struggles to keep up with the growing variety and granularity of information now needed by both airlines and travel sellers. Airlines ambition to extend their offerings beyond classic air content: conceptualizing a bike rental or guided tours of the pyramids in the PNR will be no small feat.
This “data complexification” means that sellers need access to more agile data sets to serve travelers effectively and ensure business continuity in a rapidly evolving ecosystem, while also accessing legacy content. As airlines shift toward retailing models, the challenge becomes how to represent concrete services and bundled experiences (e.g. bike rentals, guided tours or a family package for four at Disneyland). This requires data structures that go beyond traditional fare logic, blending legacy content with customer-centric propositions.
Theme 2: Transformation of the process automation
Automation is at the heart of travel retailing, streamlining many actions that once required manual intervention. However, as processes shift from script-written to event-driven, some micro-actions that were once essential are now redundant or incompatible with new workflows. For example, tasks like manual ticket revalidation or certain legacy status updates may no longer be possible – or may even hinder efficiency – when handled by next-generation systems. For instance, under NDC, a travel seller can’t just cancel a flight segment and replace it easily. Even small changes – like adjusting a return date or switching a connection – require submitting a full re-shop request.
The evolution of the PNR must support this shift, taking benefits of new capabilities, aligning with the airlines’ new systems, and extending automation use cases while allowing sellers to focus on value-added activities.
Theme 3: Extension to other industries
The traditional PNR is built around a set of mandatory elements, many of which were designed particularly for airline operational needs. Today, not every journey fits neatly into current requirements. New types of services don’t always map to legacy PNR fields. It is for instance not mandatory to disclose the name of all the guests when booking a table at a restaurant. Similarly, providers tend to explore into each other’s realms, therefore shared concepts (such as bags or premium deliveries) should be described following a unique model. A railway sold by an airline or a hotel should be identified uniquely. Reducing or eliminating unnecessary mandatory elements and normalizing descriptions across the different types of providers will give travel sellers the flexibility to adapt to new content, services, and traveler needs, without being constrained by legacy structures.
With these three themes in mind, is where the house and the PNR discussions converge. Should we keep the existing PNR structure, sunset the elements that are no longer fit for purpose and build on top to cater to the emerging needs and themes – and the many more that are likely to come? Or should we craft a new trip repository that can easily adapt to new content and needs and technologies? Do I keep my current house and install some smart devices like climate control, lighting and energy management or do I move to a completely new modular home that I can design to my new reality? Nonetheless, what really matters is offering a new modern interface, so that no matter which changes I may have to undertake in the future to change the boiler or the garage door, it won’t affect my habits and ability to interact with ease. The icing on the cake? This modernized environment will nicely fit with technological evolutions to come.
At Amadeus, our goal is to ensure that all stakeholders can make the most of this digital transformation currently ongoing in our industry, the largest transformation in decades. We are working to ensure that our travel sellers are set up with the optimum solutions to fit their needs in a new context and can operate while the industry transformation occurs, whether it’s moving to Orders or empowering systems with GenAI.
This is the third in a series of blogs that Amadeus will be publishing around the various aspects of modern travel retailing. You can read the first blog of this series here and the second one here.
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