In The Big Chair - Robert Albert of Routehappy

Robert Albert, CEO

Founded in 2011, Routehappy just made a major move by teaming up with ATPCO. Under the new arrangement, the rich content platform aims to help fuel the future of airline distribution.

The travel industry veteran of more than ten-plus years will continue to lead Routehappy as a strategic business unit as part of its ATPCO acquisition. 

What would you say are the most common misconceptions around flight shopping and why?

A common misconception around flight shopping is that consumers only care about price. The reality is that consumers care about value even more, selecting the best flight for them from a variety of criteria: price, schedule, loyalty and product. Consumers have some cognitive dissonance about this, though, often saying they bought the cheapest flight when in reality what they meant is that they bought the cheapest flight that met their unique criteria.

As customers demand more and more personalized options when booking, how will this continue to evolve, and how do airlines and travel companies need to adapt to stay ahead?

Consumers are starting to expect comprehensive product information when booking a flight, just like when booking a hotel or purchasing other products and services. This is still in early stages in flight shopping, so you’ll see more rich content integrated into more parts of the shopping flow, from search results to itineraries, explaining airline product offerings and offering upsells. Airlines and distributors that want to offer a great shopping experience and benefit from improved economics (including better conversion and yield) should invest in differentiated product offerings. This includes offering differentiated products like branded fares and merchandising them well with rich content.

Why do you think the travel industry lags behind others in advancing tech around merchandising?

Complicated and nuanced products, rigid technology platforms, commoditization mentality in air travel. It took new entrants like LCCs to kickstart the industry with real product innovation and then a new crop of technology companies and standards to make it mainstream.

What key innovations have other industries mastered that travel should prioritize investment in?

Better search and more personalization come to the top of my mind.

Looking at your extended deal with Expedia and its brands, what’s the benefit to using a service like Routehappy over in‐house IT?

Using Routehappy costs any given airline or distributor much less and provides a far better solution than they could do on their own for two main reasons: (a) rich content is highly specialized and demands constant maintenance and (b) the network effect, the more airlines and distributors that use a standard solution the better it gets for all participants. Building it instead of using a common rich content source would be reinventing the wheel each time.

What do you say to those who consider Routehappy a "nice to have," rather than critical part of their online shopping provision?

If you wait on something that makes this much sense, you risk falling and staying behind.

The partnership with Routehappy Hub UPAs and Serko’s Zeno is its first for corporate bookings. What opportunities do you see in the corporate space?

Business travelers need to understand the product they’re buying to stay productive, so rich content is critical. Rich content is also an excellent tool to highlight preferred carriers.

As more airlines come around to IATA’s NDC, how do partnerships like Routehappy’s with OpenJaw better serve them?

We’re seamlessly integrating an airline’s rich content into NDC APIs powered by Farelogix and OpenJaw so they can focus their precious resources on creating and improving their rich content and display it easily however they distribute products and services.

So it's been all about air travel so far ‐ where can Routehappy go next ‐ Roomhappy? Carhappy?

I bought Roomhappy.com at the very beginning of Routehappy, so good guess! Our solution could be used in other industries, but the opportunity in air travel is so big, we’re laser-focused on it. Our acquisition last week by ATPCO solidifies that focus.

You spent seven years working for an OTA. What did you see during that time that has helped with running Routehappy?

I was with Site59, Travelocity and Sabre for eight years working across travel products and business models. It gave me broad exposure to travel distribution that helped me identify market problems which I thought needed fixing. Commoditization of flight shopping was a glaring one for me.

What is proudest professional achievement so far?

Starting Routehappy and building useful, high quality products and content that solve a real problem for an entire industry and from which it can innovate and benefit.

What gaps would you admit to having in your overall knowledge of the industry?

The travel industry, or even more narrowly the air travel industry, is so vast that any one person can only know so much. I have quite a bit of knowledge about air travel distribution but still feel like it’s just the tip of the iceberg. I don’t think I could have been successful with Routehappy without having a solid 10-plus years in the travel industry before starting it. I’m really enjoying getting to know the pricing side of air travel with ATPCO and how important it is to connect pricing with rich content.

Routehappy was just acquired by ATPCO. What did you see in the company as a good fit?

It makes a lot of sense. ATPCO is the industry leader in airline pricing data and Routehappy is the industry leader in airline rich content. We both realized how valuable it is to tightly connect pricing with product/fare information (i.e. rich content) at the source. It’s the very best way for airlines to manage their rich content and flow it through all of their sales channels, just like how more than 430 airlines use ATPCO for their pricing data today.

What was the acquisition process like?

ATPCO and Routehappy embarked on a strategic partnership early last year. As we started working together to share data, we realized the opportunity was far greater than we had thought and that it would make sense to go all the way. ATPCO understands what Routehappy’s journey has been like more than anyone because our businesses are similar, even though our content is unique. We are also excited by ATPCO’s desire to transform and modernize and know we can help them with it. It felt like a perfect match, so the process was easy.