From a fare-filing system that some observers believed could become obsolete in the age of NDC and other innovations, ATPCO is expanding its purview.
A new partnership with Routehappy, the company that aims to organize airlines’ rich content to better serve both the carriers and their distributors, brings together two things “that need to come together,” Routehappy CEO Robert Albert said.
ATPCO has created the ability to price products such as premium seats separately from the air fare, he said.
Meanwhile, Albert said, “We are building the ability to describe and show all these separate products.”
Several years ago, when the airlines adopted ancillary services as a means to claw their way out of the recession and back to profitability, ATPCO created a list of every conceivable ancillary product and gave each one a sub code.
That enabled airlines to promote their à la carte offerings in all the various sales channels.
It also ensured consistent and accurate collection of ancillary revenues.
Routehappy has never been focused on the pricing of fares or products. Rather, it aims to make airlines’ rich content available wherever they want to put it.
Under the new partnership, Routehappy associates that rich content with ATPCO’s sub code.
“It’s more granular targeting,” Albert said. “Every image can be tagged.”
Once that association is made, ATPCO’s fare and ancillary data can be combined with the rich content available on the Routehappy hub and made available to GDSs, online travel agencies and other third-party distributors, taking the air travel shopping experience to a new level, he said.
ATPCO CEO Rolf Purzer said:
“Routehappy has made innovative achievements in rich content merchandising. So combining the depth, reach, and reliability of ATPCO’s fare and ancillary data with the Routehappy Hub was a logical next step for us.”