Opening New Opportunities for Airlines in the Metasearch World

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

PROS has helped one of the world’s leading aviation groups, counting some of Europe’s biggest and most trusted airline brands as members, optimize its metasearch distribution as well as its marketing channel distribution. With a highly configurable, precomputed pricing solution, the airline group can deliver customized sales offers to its metasearch partners with accuracy and control without a single pricing and shopping request to its host PSS.

Used today by a global group of air carriers, the PROS Shopping solution enables the instantaneous distribution of millions of priced flight search results across 75 international markets.

CHALLENGE

The aviation group has an unbeatable sales offering: a global route map and strong, reliable carrier brands. To enable rapid distribution and a customizable sales offering to metasearch and marketing channels without relying on traditional look-to-book ratios, a more advanced technological solution was needed — a solution that enables instantaneous search capabilities for omni-channel distribution and a highly accurate sales offering.

SOLUTION

The answer to this distribution challenge was to use PROS Shopping solution FastSearch, a precomputed pricing solution built on PROS proprietary airfare search technology. Successfully piloted since 2014 by a global carrier from the aviation group across two markets, FastSearch is now deployed in additional countries and being adopted by the rest of the group’s European carriers.

Numerous metasearch business partners today access the carriers’ sales offer content through FastSearch.

Because time-to-market is a critical success factor, content providers need to be able to deliver quickly. Once an airline decides on a new marketing or metasearch partner, PROS ensures rapid integration.

PROS FastSearch initially launched instant searchability of sales offers in seven markets and has now expanded to more than 70 markets and counting.

The PROS solution handles a vast volume of sales offer data for airline alliances, which have upwards of 20 members, with millisecond response times.

Bookability is a decisive factor in the airline group’s decision to use FastSearch. The PROS precomputed pricing solution matches the dotcom logic while facilitating deep linking and booking success without sending a single pricing and shopping request to the host.

FastSearch’s flexibility means the group of carriers can independently configure what sales offers to distribute and to whom — including different booking classes and passenger types, such as adult, child and infant, regardless of fare class. Using PROS Sales Offer Manager, carriers can directly define the necessary baseline to configure their rules for building sales offers.

Finally, the PROS solution gives the airline group ease of management for omni-channel distribution. The airlines have access to a web-based sales console management portal to ensure complete control over sales offers. Changes are processed in real time and allow for quick adjustments to fares, distribution frequency and markets for any new or existing partners.

RESULTS

Business partners welcome the airline group’s growing focus on metasearch and recognize the results of its investment in innovative distribution. The vice president of travel for one of the airline group’s partners says:

“The PROS credentials for the API service provided us with easy documentation for the airline group’s integration on our side. During the integration, the speed of service was excellent, and the integration was seamless and quickly executed in order with the group’s strategy to move fast into the direct market.’’

Another group partner says:

“By using the PROS instant search system, we are delighted to be able to offer the airline group’s network directly to our users. This enables a rapid metasearch price display from the group, and our users will very quickly see the group’s prices. We are pleased to work with this solution, as it is detailed and easy to interface with. Also, we enjoy the very quick and professional support action from PROS.”

With the help of the PROS precomputed pricing solution, the airline group was able to double its metasearch business partners to more than 40 in 2018.

The airline group’s director of global online sales and mobile services says:

“The PROS solution enabled us to quickly scale our reach in the metasearch world and to build highly beneficial partnerships for both us and our metasearch partners.”