Alongside the current war over distribution channels, GDSs and the airlines are actually locked in another battle over passenger information.
As many Tnooz readers are frequent flyers, they generate data about their buying behavior, so this actually affects many of us.
The GDSs have a series of data analytic products:
- BIDT (Billing Information Data Transfer) is specific to a single airline and is its billing data.
- MIDT (Marketing Information Data Transfer), such as this product group from Sabre, is marketing data that can be obtained from a single GDS (or multiple ones) which provide buying behavior.
In the US and European Community, rules on customer information are different, so as a result data is regulated differently in each jurisdiction.
In recent years, the Air Transport Association (IATA), which also has access to similar data, but ticketing rather than details about reservations, has produced a series of products, known as Paxis.
The GDSs hate competition, and so they have gone down the route of suing to prevent someone from using "their" data. In the first round in 2009, Amadeus won against IATA.
However, the latest battle saw Sabre sued in a Canadian court over essentially the same situation. But this time, the GDSs lost.
There are two issues here we should consider.
The first one: is the data actually good enough data? With the GDSs collectively producing less than 50% of global airline ticketing, is the data good from a global or even specific basis? The lack of ubiquity of data is clearly an issue.
Secondly, the type of data becomes important. The data fields in question may not give you the information and knowledge you desire because it is post-sales activity. There is no customer search behavior included in this.
The world of data analytics have dramatically changed and the emphasis away from proxy and often post-sales activity has less information than business intelligence can give you from analyzing the data streams of websites.
Of course, another points to consider is whose data is it? Selling of analytics has been a practice for years. The GDSs have made a fair amount of money from selling the airlines back their own data.
IATA’s director general and CEO Giovanni Bisignani, speaking at the 66th IATA Annual General Meeting and World Air Transport Summit Berlin, made this comment on the topic:
"And this year we have a special place on the wall for the Western GDSs. ….. On top of that, they sell you your data with a seven-digit price tag. That is pure profit. BASTA [enough]. We will break their monopoly on your data with a cost-effective solution."
This one is going to run for a while.