China's Letsfly to “go deep” into low-cost airline content

Dusting off the aftermath of the pandemic, Letsfly, the Chinese flight platform that prides itself on providing good quality, low-cost airline content via direct API, is building up its global team to expand beyond China.

The flight platform, which started in 2014 focused on providing low-cost carrier content to service Chinese agencies, is now connected to 50 low-cost carriers and aims to increase that to 60 by the third quarter, by extending its coverage to the Middle East. It is also looking to scale up its agency network in Asia and the Middle East.

Ming Foong, its newly appointed chief commercial officer, said, “We are focused on covering larger LCC carriers in each key region. We cover about 85% of seat capacity in Europe and 90% in Asia. By third quarter, we will add carriers in the Middle East, which will bring us to 80-90% of the market.”

Ming Foong of Let'sfly

While Ming, who’s based in Singapore, said Letsfly was not as badly hit by the pandemic as other Chinese travel businesses that were more domestic-focused, it still had to lay off staff and cut costs. “Thankfully, most of the business was in Europe and Asia – markets which recovered earlier – and now the business is seeking to diversify to reduce its dependence on any one market.”

It is building up its commercial team and while Singapore will serve as its international headquarters, it is looking to distribute its servicing, product and tech teams across different regions. It now has 400 staff, half of whom are in product and tech, primarily in China.

Ming, who was previously heading strategy for Fliggy and prior to that with Travelport, said the reason why it has such a big tech team is because Letsfly’s direct API connectivity was its most unique proposition to its airline customers as well as the agents using its platform.

Of the total number of carriers, only four are not connected via API, due to the airlines’ API availability. “Direct airline connectivity is not easy to achieve technically, which is why we have such a huge team just working on deep content connectivity,” he said.

“This level of deep quality content benefits the OTAs by giving them website parity content including all fare types, packages and ancillaries to service their customers, and it reduces gray market fares. It helps travel retailers scale LCC connectivity through standardized, unified API, and increase profitability by supporting retailers’ business models and operational processes.”

Ming said more low-cost airlines were beginning to see the value of third-party distribution “as strategic to their overall distribution.”

Last week, Ryanair returned to Amadeus after more than a five-year absence from the largest global distribution system operator, signaling that corporate travel was the target of its renewed participation.

*This article originally appeared in Web In Travel.