Emily Weiss, senior managing director and global travel industry lead at business consultancy giant Accenture, identifies where carriers should be focussing their efforts as they embrace the ‘retail mindset’

Imagine a traveller named Elisa, who books a flight directly on an airline’s app.

Based on her past travel behaviour and preferences, the system recommends her personalised offers – not just fares, but curated bundles.

She selects her seat, adds a vegan meal, extra baggage, and lounge access, all within a few clicks.

A week later, she decides to upgrade to premium economy and switch to an earlier flight.

Instead of calling customer service or managing multiple booking reference, she simply opens the app, views her unified “order,” and makes the changes instantly.

Her preferences are preloaded from past trips, and the system updates her itinerary, pricing, and boarding pass in real time. No rebooking, no fragmented tickets, no manual intervention.

Everything is personalised, streamlined, and synced, just like modifying an online shopping cart.

This is the power of offer and order management, which transforms air travel into a flexible, retail-like experience where changes are easy, and customer-centric.

More than seven in 10 travellers prefer to book air travel through Online Travel Agencies (OTAs), according to a research report by Accenture, drawn by their convenience, bundling options, and seamless experience.

This trend underscores a key challenge for airlines: legacy systems limit their ability to match the level of personalisation and flexibility travellers now expect.

However, the opportunity is just as clear.

Airlines that fully implement modern Offer, Order, Settle, and Deliver (OOSD) systems can close this gap, unlocking 3–6% in additional annual revenue while regaining ownership of the customer relationship.

Taking a retail-led approach

Airlines’ legacy systems create frameworks that can not only frustrate travellers, but can also limit their ability to innovate, personalise, and compete in a market that shows no signs of slowing down.

Many airlines are exploring new ways to modernise their distribution, including adopting New Distribution Capability (NDC), that aims to revolutionise how airlines distribute and sell flight content, ultimately, enabling them to offer richer, more personalised offerings to customers and travel agents.

While nearly seven in 10 airlines are looking to reduce their reliance on legacy systems such as Global Distribution System (GDS), few are ready to walk away from them completely.

Instead, most are pursuing a hybrid distribution approach, leveraging modern tools like NDC alongside existing GDS and legacy Electronic Data Interchange For Administration, Commerce, and Transport (EDIFACT) frameworks to balance innovation with operational continuity and partner reach.

The power of technology

The OOSD model is more than a technological upgrade. It is a fundamental shift in how airlines manage their products, processes, and customer relationships.

These systems enable airlines to gain deeper insights into customer behaviours and preferences and then tailor their brand to resonate with these insights, creating a distinct identity, value proposition and evolved offerings to engage and retain attention in a crowded marketplace.

In this context, personalisation becomes more than a marketing tactic, it becomes a core differentiator and Offer Management has taken the centre stage, and rightly so.

More than six in 10 (63%) executives report that they are focusing on offer creation, and a similar number (60%), cited pricing, promotions, and personalisation as key to shaping traveller experience.

Leveraging data to outperform Online Travel Agencies

Airlines have access to customer data, but not in a way that’s integrated, actionable, or retail-ready.

Without the right infrastructure and mindset, they struggle to connect the dots and unlock its full potential.

Unlocking it requires a coordinated shift in technology, operations, and commercial strategy.

With the adoption of modern retail frameworks, Offer, Order, Settle, and Deliver (OOSD) and ONE Order, airlines can begin delivering the seamless, personalised, and flexible experiences travellers expect.

Four areas to explore

There are a number of key imperatives, airlines aiming to modernise their retail strategies, should consider.

• First, they must transition from legacy systems like EDIFACT and PNR-based systems to more order-based platforms.
• Second, airlines should prioritise order maturity by shifting focus from pricing to full-service order orchestration, including fulfillment, re-accommodation, and refunds.
• Third, they need to reframe partner relationships by adopting a hybrid distribution strategy that includes aggregators and GDS but keeps the airline in control of the offer and order lifecycle.
• Finally, it’s just as much about people and processes as it is about platforms. That means adjusting processes of the adjacent functions and investing in a workforce that truly understands both the operational side of the business and the world of digital commerce and that oftentimes starts with building cross-functional expertise in-house.

Retail mindset is the new boarding pass

Some 80% of travellers are already using gen AI tools according to Accenture’s Consumer Pulse Survey,  and airlines that don’t meet these needs risk falling behind.

But for those ready to embrace the challenge and build long term resilience, the payoff has the potential to be enormous.