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Posted Jul 20, 2010
United Airlines parent UAL Corp. posted a second quarter profit of $273 million, emerging from a long financial slump and improving on some closely watched year-over-two numbers. The company cited favorable corporate and premium booking trends and particularly strong transoceanic performance. Analysts speaking with the company's executives on a Tuesday conference call sounded generally impressed. UAL's stock closed the day up more than a buck to $22.01. Why? According to UAL executives, capacity discipline and fees.
Posted Jul 13, 2010
Anyone else think it's odd that tomorrow's hearing scheduled by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure's Subcommittee on Aviation will not include American, Continental, Delta, United or US Airways? Or even the Air Transport Association? I do.
Posted Jul 13, 2010
Air Canada, American Airlines, Continental Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and US Airways, plus the Airline Tariff Publishing Company, announced the formation of their Open Airline XML Integration Standard group to "promote a standardized XML (eXtensible Markup Language) schema as the optimal electronic messaging structure for airline system connectivity used in content distribution." The group named as executive director Jim Young, a travel distribution veteran who helped found the industry's existing XML standards body, now called OpenTravel.
Posted Jul 2, 2010
After The Beat last week reported that some airline distribution execs were talking about creating a new standards body, Tnooz on Monday posted a similar item by Dennis Schaal. Today, he published quite a few more details including the apparent name of the group, OpenAxis; its plans to use Farelogix XML schema to focus on merchandising; pricing for participation; and its employment of Open Travel Alliance founder and former airline and hotel distribution exec Jim Young as "agent" and potential executive director. After the story in The Beat, we received feedback from folks concerned that such a body would fragment the standards business, including International Air Transport Association manager for ticketing and reservations standards Mike Irons.
Posted Jun 30, 2010
American Airlines is refusing to accept the status quo in corporate travel distribution, pushing a strategy to move all indirect distribution to its XML-based "direct connection" to enable personalization, merchandizing and negotiated corporate "bundles." You've read about these moves and the strong industry reaction in The Beat, and now we're thrilled to announce that AA's new managing director of distribution and merchandising strategy, Bridget Blaise-Shamai, has agreed to field 30 minutes of questions in our Hot Seat session at The Beat Live, Sept. 20-22 in Chicago. Register today...
www.thebeat.travel/live
AA named Bridget Blaise-Shamai to run distribution and merchandising strategy following her three years as vice president of AAdvantage Marketing. Blaise-Shamai joined AA in 1995 after she spent time in Central Europe working on privatization plans for various state-owned companies. She earned a BA degree from Vanderbilt University and an MBA from Washington University, St. Louis.
Blaise-Shamai accompanies Hogg Robinson chief executive David Radcliffe, Travelport GDS CEO Gordon Wilson and other industry leaders as confirmed speakers for The Beat Live. Register today for our early-bird rate. The Beat Live will take place at the W Chicago City Center.
www.thebeat.travel/live
Posted May 12, 2010
Farelogix is highly supportive of management and settlement standards being developed around the merchandising process. We have been the leaders in developing the first ARC certified EMD (both EMD-A and EMD-S), which is in full accordance to the IATA reporting standard. Farelogix merchandising solutions also fully support ATPCO fare filings if airlines opt to use ATP instead of alternative merchandising solutions in the market.
However, Farelogix is concerned about the recent announcement to extend the "standards movement" to the actual airline product definition and sales process.
Posted Apr 30, 2010
Some airlines have said they support use of ARC's electronic miscellaneous document as a means to better equip themselves to sell and account for ancillary revenue items, while others haven't publicly said a thing about it. AirTran is one exception. It's not interested.
Posted Apr 14, 2010
So here we are, Merchandising WIIFM Series Installment 5, and instead of the planned content (a rather pithy piece on portable merchandising), I'm grumpy and have decided to vent. Hopefully my rantings will prove interesting enough for you to keep reading.
I recently attended a CASMA (Computerized Airline Sales and Marketing Association) meeting in Montreal. I was invited to participate in a panel discussion entitled, "Value-based Merchandising." In fact, this year, the entire CASMA conference appeared to be dedicated to the topic of ancillary services and merchandising. This was not cause for grumpiness, in fact quite the opposite –- I was delighted to see so much discussion and interchange on the topic.
Posted Mar 22, 2010
A recent report by American Express Business Travel includes lists of airline service fees charged by U.S. and non-U.S. carriers, as well as other stats, a good overview of the ancillary fee topic and some advice on how to manage through the complexities. It is available here.
Posted Feb 25, 2010
So far, we’ve established that there are a number of opportunities associated with flight merchandising -- new revenue streams, revitalized supplier-customer relationships, and a way for airlines to finally move beyond commoditization and truly differentiate their product. We left off our last installment, however, with an important question: “How will this rapid adoption of airline merchandising be possible, given the complexities that characterize airline and agency operational and technical supporting processes?”
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