ATPCO boosts retail solution with complete integration of Routehappy

Just more than one year after its acquisition of Routehappy, ATPCO says it has finished integrating that company’s rich content into its system, facilitating the development of products to lead “airlines, systems and channels into the next generation of retailing.”

Following the February 2018 acquisition, Routehappy operated as a wholly owned subsidiary of ATPCO, led by its CEO, Robert Albert. With the integration complete, Albert is now ATPCO’s executive vice president of retailing, reporting to ATPCO CEO Rolf Purzer.

Routehappy sales head Jonathan Savitch becomes chief commercial officer for ATPCO, and Routehappy product head Jaivin Anzalota becomes ATPCO’s chief product officer.

“When we did the acquisition, we tried to let Routehappy operate within their silo, in the same corporate structure that had existed before,” Purzer says.

“We very soon realized there’s a lot of more synergies we can create if we bring the two product teams together into one team. So the Routehappy rich content team and the ATPCO ancillary team both are together and developing the ATPCO by Routehappy retailing solution.”

The new Retailing Solutions product line brings together ATPCO’s Optional Services and Branded Fares with Routehappy’s Amenities Hub, UTA (Universal Ticket Attribute) Hub, and UPA (Universal Product Attribute Hub.

Savitch says ATPCO’s work managing more than 200 million fares for 460 airlines and its partnerships with carriers, agencies, search engines, global distribution systems and governments worldwide is providing “more content, a lot more breadth, a lot more systems plugging in, so it’s quite a big expansion of the overall capabilities in that way.”

The retailing products are intended to help airlines create, manage and distribute differentiated products through all channels using dynamic pricing, branded fares, rich content, NDC and other distribution capabilities. ATPCO’s Next Generation Storefront solution, which provides a more detailed way to display flights, will be incorporated into Retailing Solutions once it is finalized.

Looking ahead, Purzer says the full integration of Routehappy into ATPCO positions the company for the future, not just with the regard to rich content but also by creating a new structure to drive innovation.

“As an organization we had to change as well and expand our capability from being basically a very reliable, very accurate intermediary for content distribution … to move into the direction to be a co-innovator within the industry and a company that can be described as a data and technology company,” Purzer says.

“To do that it was not just a product play; it was an organizational structure and culture play. We wanted intentionally to get in talent, to get in culture that is much more agile than ATPCO’s culture and to rejuvenate with new genes ATPCO as a company. That is really happening.”