Africa’s travel and tourism sector has immense growth potential. But a major hurdle that first needs to be overcome is the large percentage of the continent’s population who remain unbanked, particularly when it comes to facilitating payment for travel and tourism services.

Additionally, there is a need to digitise existing products and services to enhance market access and the experience for all travellers and improve operational efficiencies for businesses operating in the sector.

From a fintech perspective, it is crucial to identify ways to facilitate transactions between businesses in the tourism sector and payment oversight entities. One successful example of this is mobile money, which has gained significant traction across Africa with platforms like M-Pesa in Kenya leading the way. Integrating mobile payment solutions into traveltech platforms can cater to the large unbanked population and provide convenient payment options for travellers throughout the continent.

Cross-border remittances already play a critical role in many African countries, as they heavily rely on payments made from the diaspora. Fintech can help here by facilitating affordable and convenient cross-border money transfers for travel purposes. Blockchain-based solutions, for instance, can reduce costs, improve transparency, and accelerate the speed of transactions, benefiting both travellers and their families.

Fintech platforms can introduce micro-investing or savings features specifically designed for travel purposes. By enabling individuals to save small amounts of money regularly, these platforms can help people build travel funds over time. Fintech solutions can also address the challenges of financial inclusion in Africa by leveraging alternative data sources for credit scoring and providing access to credit for individuals with limited formal banking history. This can empower more people to travel and support the growth of domestic tourism within the continent.

To better incorporate fintech into existing traveltech solutions, online travel agencies and digital travel platforms should consider integrating fintech solutions to streamline payment processes, provide secure transactions, and even offer financial services like microinsurance or access to credit for travel expenses. Platforms like Airbnb, for instance, which have already disrupted the traditional accommodation industry could benefit from fintech integration to facilitate seamless and secure payment processes between hosts and travellers.

Africa’s rich natural and cultural heritage presents opportunities for sustainable tourism initiatives. Fintech can support impact investing in sustainable tourism by providing crowdfunding or investment platforms that connect travellers, local communities, and investors interested in supporting environmentally friendly and socially responsible travel projects. This could be realised through peer-to-peer lending or crowdfunding that supports the growth of alternative accommodation providers or local travel start-ups in Africa.

Loyalty programs are an essential tool for fostering customer loyalty and engagement in the travel industry. By leveraging fintech solutions, data analytics, and social impact initiatives, loyalty programs in Africa can enhance the customer experience. Personalised rewards based on local preferences can be integrated into mobile-first solutions, further driving customer retention, repeat bookings, and overall industry growth.

While there are significant benefits to integrating fintech and traveltech, it is crucial to address potential risks. Data breaches, identity theft, and unauthorised access to financial accounts are serious concerns that must be mitigated through robust security measures. Seeking guidance from mentors or professionals, implementing backup plans and alternative payment methods, prioritising data privacy, and complying with regulations are essential steps in managing these risks.

Regulatory compliance is another critical aspect to consider. Fintech and traveltech platforms must understand and adhere to relevant financial regulations, such as anti-money laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) requirements, to ensure compliance and build trust among users.

Moreover, the travel industry is susceptible to market volatility, geopolitical events, and natural disasters. To offset these risks, platforms must diversify their offerings, have contingency plans, and stay updated on market trends and advisories.

Access to capital can also be a challenge for fintech and traveltech solutions. Limited credit history or collateral may hinder entrepreneurs and businesses from accessing the necessary funds. It is important then to carefully evaluate fintech lending platforms and ensure alignment with financial capabilities.

Bridging the gap between fintech and traveltech holds immense potential for Africa’s travel and tourism sector. By incorporating fintech solutions into existing traveltech platforms, we can enhance payment processes, facilitate secure transactions, promote financial inclusion, and support sustainable tourism initiatives.

However, it is vital to address potential risks and challenges through robust security measures, regulatory compliance, and contingency plans. With careful implementation and collaboration, fintech and traveltech can work together to unlock the full potential of Africa’s vibrant travel industry.

Source:  Gadget

Flutterwave, a leading fintech company, has teamed up with the International Air Transport Association (IATA) to enhance travel to sub-Saharan Africa. By integrating with IATA’s payment platform, Flutterwave enables airlines to process customer payments through various methods, including cards, bank transfers, and mobile money, providing a seamless payment experience for travelers.

Flutterwave is renowned for its payment infrastructure that serves global merchants and payment service providers across Africa. With over 400 million transactions processed, totaling above $25 billion, and catering to more than one million businesses, including notable clients like Uber, Airpeace, Bamboo, and Piggyvest, Flutterwave has solidified its position in the fintech industry.

The recent partnership with IATA Financial Gateway (IFG) offers airlines the capability to receive local payments from African markets through all their distribution channels. IATA, which represents around 290 international airlines, sees this collaboration as a means to enhance operations in Africa while providing customers with convenient local and international payment options.

Flutterwave’s CEO and founder, Olugbenga Agboola, highlights the potential for accelerated growth in Africa’s aviation sector, projected to be one of the fastest-growing regions over the next two decades. Simplifying payment processes for global airlines entering the African market is expected to encourage further expansion and investment in the continent’s aviation industry.

Muhammad Albakri, IATA’s Senior Vice President of financial settlement and distribution services, expresses excitement over Flutterwave’s participation in bringing secure and innovative payment methods to airlines, travel resellers, and the traveling public in Africa. The collaboration between Flutterwave and IATA aims to enhance the overall travel experience for passengers while boosting economic growth in the African aviation sector.

Source: techafricanews 

Sabre Corporation, a leading software and technology provider that powers the global travel industry, announced an agreement with leading digital vouchering platform iCoupon to enable its airline customers to enhance the passenger and crew experience during flight disruption. Using the iCoupon technology, airlines can turn passenger and staff boarding passes into vouchers that can be immediately redeemed at airport restaurants and retailers.

“Sabre has deep global expertise in minimizing the impact of airline disruption, so we’re thrilled that we will be working closely together through this new agreement,” said Richard Bye, CEO of iCoupon. “This alliance will support our global expansion plans by enabling us to offer our innovative solution to more airlines across the world, while allowing airlines to improve efficiencies, reduce costs, and improve passenger satisfaction during times of disruption.”

Airlines around the world use Sabre’s intelligent service recovery solutions to holistically solve passenger reaccommodation challenges, including providing travellers with self-service options to enable them to effortlessly choose their own flights. iCoupon’s solution will complement Sabre’s existing technology and expertise. Eliminating the need for a physical voucher and providing an environmentally friendly solution, iCoupon’s technology enables airlines and ground handlers to remotely and instantly issue digital vouchers directly to a passenger’s boarding pass in the event of significant delays or disruption. Passengers can then instantly redeem their voucher at any iCoupon-integrated restaurant or retailer with their mobile or printed boarding pass. The solution can also be used for staff and crew meal entitlements.

“Even with the very best network plan and the most optimal scheduling, unexpected delays and disruptions happen for all sorts of reasons,” said Corrie DeCamp, Senior Vice President, Product Management for Sabre Travel Solutions. “And when a disruption does happen, passengers expect and demand instant solutions. Providing immediate compensation through unique barcodes on boarding passes that passengers already have streamlines processes for airlines while minimizing what can be a stressful situation for both passengers and airline staff. We’re delighted to be bringing our airline partners the opportunity to add iCoupon to their disruption strategies.”

SOURCE: Traveldailynews

Airports are bustling hubs of activity, with passengers, flights, and cargo passing through their gates every day. Efficiently managing operations and ensuring a seamless travel experience for passengers is a complex task.

In Doha’s Hamad International Airport (DOH), the second-best airport in the world (according to SKYTRAX), a revolutionary AI system called EMMA – Environmental and Movement Monitoring for Airports – is transforming the way the airport operates, optimizing efficiency, and enhancing safety.

What exactly does EMMA do?

EMMA’s CEO and co-founder, Wisam Costandi, identified a crucial issue that airports around the world face: a lack of efficient communication between airports, airlines, and air traffic controllers. This leads to ineffective processes, which in turn, results in a loss of time and revenue.

Thus, EMMA was born – a futuristic platform powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) that utilizes advanced algorithms and real-time data to manage the movement of aircraft, vehicles, and personnel on the airport’s apron and taxiways. By harnessing the power of AI and ML, EMMA has revolutionized Hamad International Airport’s operations and ushered in a new era of efficiency and productivity.

In a statement shared with Simple Flying, Costandi said:

“EMMA brings improved coordination and provides greater visibility into all airport operations for all stakeholders, increasing efficiency and resulting in more on-time arrivals and departures, while decreasing CO2 emissions considerably.”

Unrivaled benefits for airports

One of the most significant advantages of EMMA is its ability to adapt and learn from real-world operations. Through continuous data collection and ML, the AI system becomes increasingly intelligent over time. It can fine-tune its algorithms, improve predictions, and adapt to changing airport dynamics. This flexibility ensures that EMMA remains a valuable asset, capable of meeting the evolving needs of the airport and accommodating future growth.

These capabilities reap benefits for airports in the form of efficiency, better decision-making, better planning through increased predictability, improved accuracy and timeliness, better slot performance and resource utilization, and reduced ground delays. All in all, these advantages contribute to reduced operational costs and decreased carbon emissions.

Growth and expansion

The implementation of EMMA at DOH has set a new standard for airport operations worldwide. By harnessing the power of AI and ML, the system has transformed how the airport manages its operations, optimizing efficiency, enhancing safety, and improving the passenger experience.

As other airports around the globe witness the success of EMMA, it is expected that AI systems will play an increasingly vital role in shaping the future of aviation, leading to smarter, greener, and more passenger-centric airports.

In fact, EMMA is expected to expand to the US in view of the increased taxi time at 30 of the country’s largest hubs. As reported in The New York Times, a 2019 study from Airlines for America found that from 1990 to 2018, taxi time increased by 19% at these hubs and 24% at 31 medium-sized airports. With the advent of EMMA, this could very well change for the better in the near future.

SOURCE: Simple Flying

As travelers seek better shopping and booking experiences, travel companies must transform both the technology powering their retailing systems and the organizational culture behind them. Recent milestones within Sabre’s Beyond NDC program demonstrate how the company is advancing new retailing opportunities across the entire travel value chain.

Today’s travelers have higher expectations than ever. They not only want personalized experiences and customizable options, but greater transparency and more convenient ways to manage their plans. To help travel companies meet these expectations, Sabre is accelerating its Beyond NDC program, which enables third-party travel retailers to sell personalized offers and real-time content.

“Since January, the Sabre team is proud to have launched New Distribution Capability (NDC) offers from American Airlines, United Airlines, Finnair, and most recently Lufthansa Group in a soft launch capacity,” said Kathy Morgan, vice president of NDC and airline supply at Sabre. “We’re now focused on collaborating with the airlines to encourage travel agency adoption. We hope this news makes agencies take notice that NDC is no longer an experiment — it’s here.”

In April, American Airlines made headlines as it embarked on this transformation. The airline is now providing NDC offers through Sabre’s global distribution system, reserving upwards of 40 percent of its fares for NDC-powered channels and direct booking channels. SkiftX spoke with Morgan to examine the business case for transitioning to NDC-enabled retailing and to understand how to navigate the associated challenges.

The Case for Transitioning to Offer and Order Retailing

“An offer and order framework is foundational to modern retailing,” Morgan said. “Other industries such as entertainment, online shopping, and finance already use an offer and order framework, utilizing data insights, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence to give consumers valuable, relevant, and seamless experiences. This is what the airline industry needs to meet the expectations of today’s travelers.”

With offer and order retailing supported by NDC, airlines create various offers in real time. These offers may include products and services like seat selection, extra leg-room, or Wi-Fi. Longer term, these offers may expand to products not traditionally sold by airlines, such as hotel add-ons and other extras that can be bundled together seamlessly by third-party retailers based on travelers’ needs.

By gaining access to a broader selection of offers from airlines, travel retailers can support the needs of different types of travelers, as well as create new cross-sell and upsell opportunities for travel agencies. Payment, settlement, delivery, and reconciliation processes are consolidated and streamlined via orders.

“Not only does NDC open the door to more retailing opportunities for airlines, but it also enhances personalization and choice for travelers when shopping for travel and managing trips,” Morgan said. “Sabre’s overarching strategy is rooted in understanding these customer needs.”

The Impact of NDC-Powered Channels on the Travel Retailing Ecosystem While Sabre’s increasing number of NDC-integrated airlines signals a growing commitment from the airline industry to embrace NDC offers and enhance travel retailing, Morgan acknowledges that many travel sellers face a change management challenge that will take time and resources.

“Technology that has been optimized over decades is changing, and this change will require travel agencies to adapt or even eliminate many long-standing practices,” Morgan said. “In addition, the NDC standards remain a work in progress, so travel agencies will need to keep a lot of plates spinning. They’ll need to manage commercial, technical, and operational changes throughout their organizations.”

In terms of commercial changes, travel retailers should discuss with their partners how commercial terms may change for NDC bookings. On the technical side, the transition will not require an abrupt change, but rather a gradual
hybrid approach with traditional travel options available alongside NDC offers.

To that end, Morgan said Sabre is “integrating multiple types of content and normalizing how that content is displayed in our APIs and point-of-sale applications to make it easier for users to compare options and make informed purchases.”

Finally, when it comes to operational changes, Morgan said the most important thing to remember is that “all stakeholders in the travel value chain, including corporations, corporate booking tools, agencies, aggregators, and suppliers, must work together to prepare their systems to scale for NDC.”

Navigating the NDC Transition Path

Even as these exciting digital transformation initiatives ripple across the airline retailing ecosystem, the associated short-term challenges can be difficult to navigate.

“NDC is an industry standard, but the implementations aren’t standard,” Morgan said. “There’s tremendous flexibility and room for interpretation of the standards, which results with each one being unique.”

On managing these complexities, Morgan says her team does the heavy lifting, “from supporting multiple versions of NDC technical schemas, to accounting for country-specific tax guidelines, to integrating mid- and back-office workflow requirements, and more. Our agency point-of-sale solution, Sabre Red 360, and our online corporate booking tool, GetThere, consume the offer and order APIs to display and manage NDC offers. The Sabre NDC capabilities are built to
scale from day one.”

But not all airlines have the same strategy or pace for change. Regardless of airline decisions, Morgan said Sabre’s development work ensures the Sabre marketplace adds value for agencies no matter where the content comes from.
“Whether you’re an enthusiastic adopter of NDC — which I hope is the case — or need more time to assess NDC, we are ready to help you think through options and navigate this important industry change.”

SOURCE: SKIFT