Tigerair commits to GDS bookings
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Tigerair has formed a new partnership with Travelport that will see its fares sold via the GDS for the first time.
The two companies have entered into a new distribution partnership that will see Tigerair make its fares and ancillary content available to
Travelport-connected travel agents across the world. As part of the agreement, Tigerair will also become the first airline from the Asia Pacific region to adopt the GDS provider’s aggregated shopping technology, which forms part of the Travelport Merchandising Platform.
This will allow Tigerair to drive more ancillary product sales through the GDS channel, including checked-in bags, pre-allocated seating and meals.
Speaking to Travel Daily today, Kanesh Avili, Tigerair’s commercial director, said the Travelport tie-up would help the airline boost its travel trade business.
“Currently about 15% of our business comes from travel agents,” Avili said, but he added that the booking process for agents was “cumbersome” as it takes them out of their workflow to book through the Tigerair website.
“In future we expect to about 25% of our business to come through the GDS,” he added. Avili also revealed that the strength of travel agency bookings in Tigerair’s new markets of Indonesia and the Philippines was a major influencing factor in the decision to move on to the GDS platform.
And Damian Hickey, Travelport’s vice president of global distribution sales & services in Asia Pacific, agreed that the Aggregated Shopping functionality would streamline agent processes when making Tigerair bookings.
“Most solutions out there require travel agents to go outside their workflow. Aggregate Shopping will include [Tigerair’s] fares in the main display, allowing them to be featured alongside full-service carriers,” Hickey told Travel Daily.
He added that the technology would also offer low-cost carriers “more flexibility” in the way they can sell products via the GDS, pulling content directly from the airlines’ website, rather than having them upload fares and inventory.
The Tigerair group currently comprises four separate regional carriers: Tigerair Singapore, Tigerair Mandala (Indonesia), Tigerair Philippines and Tigerair Australia. Through the new agreement, content from the three Asia-based airlines will be bookable by Travelport-connected agents, although Avili said that he expects Tigerair Australia to join at a later date. Travelport operates the Galileo, Apollo and Worldspan GDS systems.
“For fast-growing no-frills carriers like Tigerair, it’s critical that we offer a highly flexible approach, which may be very different to more established approaches, but which allows them to distribute exactly how they chose to,” added Hickey.
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