B2B airfare search technology provider Vayant announced that it has landed Kuoni Travel UK, one of the UK's largest luxury travel agencies, as a customer.
Kuoni asked Vayant to put into place its search tool to let the agency take British Airways (BA) fares and rules loaded in ATPCO, the global airfare clearinghouse, and convert them into the format used by Kuoni’s business systems for dynamic packaging.
This move is significant because, earlier this year, BA stopped distributing fare updates via paper. Other tour operators may be interested in the service. Tnooz contacted BA earlier this summer about its decision, but the airline had no comment.
Vayant's OneSearch tool includes other information, such as yield/availability, data from its IATA tax-emulating engine, itinerary information from flight schedule provider OAG, published fares from airfare regulator ATPCO, private fares, and selected ancillary services.
Last week Vayant announced that Alpharooms.com, a UK-based online travel agency, had signed up to use a different product, FastSearch, to power its FlightFinder for "inspirational shopping." That makes for two important UK accounts in one month's time.
Rival Everbread on hiatus
Last week, Tnooz broke the news that Vayant's former rival Everbread has declared insolvency. As we reported:
According to a liquidation report, things started to go wrong for Everbread in 2011 during a protracted dispute with rival airfare shopping startup Vayant.
Vayant claimed copyright infringement over the base code behind Everbread’s Haystack system, a case which was eventually settled out of court in Vayant’s favour in November 2011.
Vayant now considers its main competitors to be the major travel technology providers Amadeus, Travelport, Sabre, and Google ITA Software.
Multiple solutions
Vayant's tool is pure shopping, not reservation like a global distribution system (GDS). Yet it allows more flexible search options than GDS systems, such as split ticketing, and it incorporates low-cost carriers along with legacy airlines.
Among Vayant's other offerings are Live Fare Emails, a white-label tool that agents can use to send fares to customers. Any prices in the message will be instantly updated the moment the traveler opens the email -- a unique tool.
Its Pricing Cache tool updates 24 times per day and has parameters that include maximum connection times, airports, airlines, and routes.
Its FastSearch tool (shown in a screenshot below) can power any flight search user experience in a white-label format.