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

eRoam technology helps travel advisors in businesses of all sizes create, book and manage personalised and highly competitive travel experiences for their clients in less time, with less hassle!

The easy to adopt and learn itinerary design and booking management technology takes care of the complexity of the entire reservations process. With eRoam you spend less time administering and more time selling.

With connections to leading global travel product providers, eRoam offers travel content in over 100,000 destinations worldwide, including over 750,000 hotels and lodging options, thousands of tours and activities, and a comprehensive range of transportation including self-drive (own arrangements), flights, trains, transfers and more.

eRoam makes it extremely simple to put together the most complex, multi-day road trip, even for agents who may not be super familiar with the destinations involved. The user simply enters the travel date, number of travelers, any relevant traveler preferences – and then eRoam automatically builds a bookable itinerary in literally seconds.

Agents can then edit the itinerary by changing hotels or activities, add additional services such as car rental, and adjust their own markup, before generating a stylish itinerary and quote document at the click of a mouse to send to their client. If the client wants to book, then the itinerary can be converted to a booking just as quickly, with confirmations automatically sent out to suppliers and vouchers electronically generated. eRoam also integrates with agent payment gateways to ensure simple invoicing and payment processing. eRoam does not interfere with commissions and does not apply a mark-up.

Sabron invites you to a demo of eRoam on 27^th Apr 2023 from 12.00 to 13.00 EAT

The demo will be conducted by Charlie Bateson, Commercial Director of eRoam Pty Ltd, responsible for the UK, Africa, and Middle East Markets.

The influence of artificial intelligence, the need for businesses of all sizes to protect against hackers and why travel must hone its TikTok content were among topics explored at the 2023 TTI Travel Tech Summit. 

Experts gathered in London this week to assess the year’s key technology issues and debate how the industry can capitalise on shifting trends – and where it is lagging behind other sectors.

Here are four tech developments poised to shake-up travel in 2023. 

’AI Has Potential Across Every Aspect Of Travel’

Artificial intelligence – providing it is used in the right context – has the potential to help travel businesses across every part of the industry. 

That was the message from Travel Ledger founder Roberto De Re, who predicted AI will be able to transform the customer experience journey – offering differentiated product information and client services – meaning travel brands could do away with “rigid” bots. 

“It would cost a fortune to pay human beings to create unique content for every distributor, so AI has a real application in that space,” he said.

’Big Or Small – You’re Equally At Risk’

 No matter how small your company is – you still must take steps to protect yourself from online hackers and against cybercrime. 

Darren Gale, vice-president of IronNet Cyber Security, said digital attacks were getting “more sophisticated” and travel companies needed to focus on employee education as well as defensive tools.

“I can guarantee travel is being focussed on by these threats because of the industry’s data sets and their desirability, as well as the transaction volumes associated with holiday bookings,” Gale warned. 

Time Is Ticking – So Up Your Tiktok Game

 We all know the growing influence of TikTok but just how impactful is it to certain demographics when planning their travel?

According to Yona Fredericks-Elekima, founder of online travel agency the Take Off Club, 60% of the app’s users are Gen Z [those born from the late-1990s to early 2010s] and they are being influenced to book through companies displaying their favourite content.

 “People will be asking ‘Where did you book? Where can I find this holiday?” Fredericks-Elekima told delegates. “They want to be able to go on these holidays.”

 Although, she stressed the industry should not have a one-size-fits-all approach to its social channels, and urged brands to “find what works for you”.

 ’Don’t Be Afraid To Integrate Payments’

 The tourism and hospitality sectors are “still very far behind” when it comes to integrated payment solutions, according to Planet’s senior VP for the UK, Ireland and North America Steven Dow. 

“Businesses don’t move quickly because they’re nervous… there’s the whole GDPR finance compliance, the data security, it’s all very stressful,” he told delegates. 

Dow urged travel firms to boost their integrated payment services in a bid to streamline processes and improve customer experience.

He explained it could be the difference between a customer having to queue at a hotel reception for their room key and them having all the information already on their credit card.

Source: TTG

The hospitality sector is focused on providing recreational services and ensuring client pleasure. This may entail providing services to visitors, but it may also entail supplying services to individuals who are not tourists, such as residents taking use of their spare time or individuals visiting a location for purposes unrelated to tourism.

The demand for travel is increasing again as economies all around the world are recovering.Several businesses were impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, but hospitality was particularly hard hit. Despite this, it has shown incredible resiliency, and thanks to the successful introduction of the illness vaccine, it is now thriving. As a result, nations are relaxing their travel regulations, which are driving up demand for international travel.

The hospitality industry in India has had considerable growth in recent years and it has the potential to expand considerably more in the coming years. Due to its rich and diverse culture, visitors from all over the world have been pouring into the nation. Foreign and domestic travellers agree that India is a popular location for spiritual tourism. India’s position in the World Economic Forum’s index measuring the competitiveness of the travel and tourism industry has consistently improved, moving up from 65th in 2013 to 34th in 2019.

Trends in Hospitality Technology
Trend refers to a change in behaviour or a more extensive circumstance change. In light of this, trends in the hospitality industry may include modifications in consumer behaviour, fresh approaches to delivering services, or a general push to incorporate new hospitality technologies. Trends are frequently influenced by a variety of various reasons.

Today, technology is becoming extremely significant in every industry, including the hospitality sector. It supports businesses in the sector as they develop business practices and client interactions. Additionally, since visitors are accustomed to a range of technologies at home, they anticipate at least the same level of technology while travelling. Due to the intense competition in the sector, staying current with technology is crucial.

The pandemic has increased awareness of sustainability, ethical business practices, and the necessity for collaboration within the hospitality sector. Leading companies have been announcing their plans to offset their carbon footprint in accordance with international governmental efforts and promote best practices for responsible consumption at the level of hotel groups as sustainable travel has become the way of the future. Radisson is an example of company leading sustainability efforts, having committed to being “net zero” by 2050 and decarbonising its operations by establishing challenging emission reduction goals.

The GCC emerging as a major hub for domestic and international tourism bodes well for the hospitality industry’s future. Governments, businesses, and important stakeholders are working together to ensure that the region maintains its steady growth, draws in new markets, and shapes the travel industry’s future.

Innovation technology
The Internet of Things (IoT), integration is something that intrigues visitors to a place. It provides them with a high level of efficiency and convenience in addition to a feeling of luxury. As people begin to use technology like this in their own homes, demand for it in hotels is rising.

Eco-friendly hotels
In general, as it becomes increasingly obvious that sustainability is a significant concern, society is becoming more environmentally sensitive. These evolving attitudes have an impact on how travellers choose their accommodation. For sustainable hotels, energy efficiency, waste management, and environmentally friendly construction are top considerations.

Augmented and virtual realities
The specialised markets for these technologies have changed. They are already extremely well-liked in attractions, gaming, and entertainment, but they can also be quite helpful to hotel guests. While augmented reality superimposes virtual features on the real world, virtual reality substitutes the real world with visual and auditory information. Customers can take virtual tours of your property and even specific areas of the location if they want to experience before they buy. A hotel might utilise an interactive map to provide information to visitors via augmented reality.

Studies on the global hotel sector indicate a sharp increase in demand for new tourist destinations that previous generations of travellers had never even considered (like Central & South America and Canada).

International travel demand has surged as a result of low unemployment numbers and post-recession spending, pushing major airlines like American Airlines to add more direct air transport to overseas countries. The airline hopes to expand significantly in the years to come. This year, it added nonstop service from Newark and Cape Town.

Economists argue that businesses (in any industry) simply cannot afford to overlook the effects of globalisation. In the upcoming years, continuing the swift global expansion.

Economists argue that businesses (in any industry) simply cannot afford to overlook the effects of globalisation. Having multiple regional top management and a centralised supervisory hub will likely be necessary to maintain the company’s rapid global expansion over the coming years. Source: FNB News