Increasing complexity of airline offers will see increased demand for air fare aggregation and multi-source price caching solutions as look-to-book ratios rise exponentially.

A panel of industry experts told the UATP Airline Distribution 2025 summit that content fragmentation is a huge challenge for airlines as they take more control of offers.

More tailored real-time offer creation through IATA’s New Distribution Capability (NDC) has added to that complexity alongside traditional EDIFACT and low cost carrier API distribution.

Alessandro Ciancimono, vice president of airline distribution travel solution at Sabre, said the industry is at a crossroads as complexity and content fragmentations increases.

“Comparison shopping, given this increased complexity and higher sophistication of offers, is becoming more challenging.

“We need to be able to normalise all these offers coming from different sources in a way that’s supporting the business of the agencies and fulfilling the needs of the traveller.

“The value of aggregation and comparison is higher than ever. Now NDC is growing there is a realisation of what it means in the airline side.”

Ciancimono said to maintain shopping performance airlines that have taken more control of the offer need to cope with exponentially increasing look-to-book ratios.

“Exponentiality is an awful beast,” he said. “What it means from a technology perspective is latency is a huge challenge.

“The challenge now is for solution providers to the industry is to provide what the agency needs in this new environment.

“And on the other side there’s a clear need to have intelligent multi-source cached solutions that address traditional EDIFACT, NDC and low cost content in a way that alleviates the burden on the airlines on the shopping side otherwise this becomes a huge burden.”

Intelligent performing cache solutions that are able to support inspirational shopping is “what companies will need to win in this new world,” said Ciancimono.

Dean Wicks, chief flights officer at travel search and booking app Wego, said the firm is working with Sabre on a major global initiative on multi-source caching.

He said this is essential because it needs to deliver results faster to customer who expect speed and flexibility.

Wicks said providing users with the ability to retrieve the content they want and to pay for their choices how they want to pay is essential to succeeding in the value chain.

Neil Geurin, vice president of global sales for American Airlines, said: “There’s going to be a need for aggregation and the airlines themselves are not going to be able to do it on the scale required.

“It’s a question of how it all works, the way money floes happen in that process and how the technology allows the information flow to the end consumer.

“GDS aggregators serve a very credible service for the industry. If we tried to trade directly with 1,000 agencies, we would have a bigger problem.”

Chris Phillips, chief commercial officer of ATPCO, said there is a growing acceptance that as the industry grows and becomes more international there are certain markets all airlines cannot reach.

He said airlines “are looking to grow in new and interesting ways“ with growth in the direct channel having “tapped out”.

“There’s not enough space for everyone. There are so many new players coming in. The complexity of distribution, all this content, is not sustainable.

“You need to form of aggregation support out there that works for you. There is going to be level of consolidation as the market matures. The big tipping point might be agentic AI.

“The shopping world is about to be turned on its head. It could double or triple in the next few years.

“That bot is going to shop continuously over everything it can find for the best prices and scenarios.

“How you make sure you are going to be in a competitive situation and respond to those requests is going to be a game changer.”

Ciancimono added: “To me it’s very simple. Players as self-service providers will be able to provide value and will win. Of course that’s easy to say, more difficult to do.

“Value to me is being able to address the evolving needs and challenges of agencies and airlines in this new world.”

Gregg Turner, director of business development at CellPoint Digital, said it’s already clear that OTAs are able to win business from the direct channel by offering the preferred payment methods.

“Price comparison and meta are not just showing results for that particular airline they are showing all the routes and carriers. The carrier has a hole in its marketing funnel.

“They are not necessarily converting of that payment method [preferred by the traveller] is not supported.

“If airlines are not supporting different payment methos in certain regions they are missing out on revenue opportunities.”