The Department of Transportation is delaying any decision to force airlines to utilize the GDS-mandated methodology for selling and displaying ancillary services. They are delaying their decision because they "lack additional information about costs, benefits and consequences" of requiring carriers to provide that information to the GDSs. It's easy to understand why DOT has more questions than answers. We can just look at some of the recent comments by industry brass. Airlines now support a standardized XML for their direct connect whereby the airline can, in a fully transparent way, offer its best and most relevant product. What is standing in the way of the GDS simply connecting to those airlines? The GDS clearly express it is not a technology or "XML" issue, as recently
stated by a Sabre official in
The Beat.
"There’s this misnomer that XML is the issue and GDSs can’t handle XML; that couldn’t be the further from the truth. We do 750 million web service API XML transactions every day both in the air space and the hotel space. So we do XML. XML is not magic."
Great, it is not an issue to take an XML feed from an airline. So it must be something else. Maybe it's viewed as a "one-off" connection, which would be disruptive and inefficient for everyone. Another quote from Sabre:
"The issue here is when you take something and make it a one-off connection, something that is outside the efficien[cy] that you’ve already put in place."
Yes, it must be the one-off issue. But wait, there are already 13 airlines (now that Delta just announced) that are utilizing the new industry standard XML from the Open AXIS Group, so all Sabre or other GDSs have to do is connect using this standard and all the airlines using the Open AXIS standard are connected. In fact that seems even more efficient than what is in place today where each airline has to maintain a separate and distinct connection to each GDS.
And even if the airlines wanted to do one-off connections, the GDS seem to even encourage this. Another quote from Sabre from the same article:
"So today we are doing fare families with companies like Qantas and Air New Zealand. They wanted to sell their products in different ways and we enabled that for them. We have been doing that for four years. So, initially with Qantas, and now Air New Zealand, Porter and Aero Mexico..."
"We have developed these things over the last few years, and some of them aren’t standard at all."
No standards, yet touted by Sabre as being good for the airlines mentioned and for Sabre. So one-offs are good? Yes... No... Well maybe??? I am so confused!
Ok, so we have already established that it is neither a "one-off" nor a technical issue. That only leaves one argument from the GDS -- lack of comparison and transparency in searching. Another quote from the same article:
"The challenge where you have issues with comparison shopping and cost is that when you then have to go outside of that environment and go to a one-off, you’ve got to develop that connection and keep it in synch and in tune and get it so that it fits in with the environment that you have already created efficiency in..."
But here once again are pictures of all the wonderful transparent comparison-shopping possibilities the GDS and travel agencies can get by connecting using this new industry standard. Can you tell which comes from the traditional GDS and which comes from these nasty "one-off" direct connects? Of course you can't... and that is the point. Airlines deserve the right to choose how they want to transparently supply their information, and the GDS have the obligation to make it work. After all, isn't that what they are getting paid by the airlines to do?
But wait, there is more. A new wrinkle - latency. Yet another quote from the article:
"...and you have to potentially wait on the response from a latency perspective, so you are ready to go but you have to wait on this response to come in and get it configured into that environment."
"Again go take a look at one of the online aggregators like Kayak and look in the early days how long it took for a response to come back because it is going to multiple places and bringing it back in"
Ah yes, latency. And Kayak in the "early days." Kayak aggregates data from a number of web sites and they long ago overcame any latency issues. We are not talking about web sites here; we are talking about robust machine-to-machine interface communications and protocols. Let me get out my abacus and calculate the average response time in milliseconds direct connectivity takes.
Look, it’s no wonder that the DOT is deferring this issue. They need honest, straightforward information and not continued hyperbole and propagation of myths designed to protect the status quo. We can all agree this is a critical decision.
This post is republished with permission from the Farelogix 'Ask The Question' blog.