IATA’s Annual World Financial Symposium is one of the conferences, which attracts hundreds of high-level aviation professionals and this year wasn’t an exception. The best industry minds were debating about Digital Finance, Financial Risk Management, Complex taxes.
‘’The Total Distribution Cost' track was one of the first day's highlights. Representatives from Hitit, Amadeus, Mercator, Accelya, Lufthansa Global Business Services, Travel in Motion and Maureva have participated in the panel, masterly moderated by IATA. The Chief Financial Officer Mrs. Sezer Ozmultu was advocating Hitit's point of view on the matter. With more than 20 years of experience in aviation, both on Airline's and vendor's side, Mrs. Ozmultu provided her thoughts on the One order initiative*.
Mrs. Ozmutlu said: ''With ONE Order, all entities involved to deliver the travel, will access the single airline record to get the required data and make necessary updates.'' She predicts that: ''The inefficient processes and excessive costs for airlines caused by having separate records such as PNR; e-ticket, and EMD will be eliminated. Reducing from multiple transactions to one single Order will, therefore, help airlines achieve huge cost savings''. She enforced the argument by giving an example of significant cost savings in the past- the switch to electronic ticketing has saved the industry more than US$3-billion a year. While the cost to process one paper ticket was $10, now it costs approximately $1 to produce an e-ticket.
Ancillary sales topic was also touched during the discussion. On the question: ''Do you think today’s environment of ticket and EMDs has constrained the ability of airlines to sell ancillaries? How will Order based PNR reduce costs and make ancillaries more mainstream in the indirect channel?'' Sezer Ozmultu responded: ''Airlines’ primary source of profits are their ancillary product sales. Current environment doesn’t allow airlines to become smarter and more creative in offering to passengers extended optional products that will differentiate themselves from their competitors. Order based PNR will enable airline to bundle the products according to the customer needs and sell them from all the channels including indirect ones. One Order will reduce the costs involved being the only reference, instead of multiple data such as PNR, e-tickets, EMD’s etc, transforming the current environment. This is a very big advantage for the airline reducing their costs and increase the revenue. Passengers will no longer have to keep different reference numbers and documents. It will greatly simplify the passenger experience.''
*One Order is a concept of a single concept of a single customer order record, which holds all data elements required for order fulfillment across the air travel cycle, such as customer data, order items, payment and billing information.