Most airlines might harbour the ambition to become fully fledged retailers but they are still some way off achieving that.

The UATP Airline Distribution 2025 summit in Budapest brought together a panel of industry experts to discuss whether airlines are retailers. It was agreed they probably should try to be.

Brian Clark, partner at Hudson Crossing, said: “Airlines are not retailers today. A retailer takes something off a manufacturer and resells it.

“Airlines are suppliers today in that regard. Some may be doing it a little bit today, some may have designs of doing it in the future, but not today.”

Eric Dumas, chief executive of TPConnects, said: “The majority are not [retailers], some are trying it. Some are successful, Ryanair is successful.

“Some airlines are trying to retail not only their product. Some are successful because their commercial strategy aligns with their retailing.

“They have a retailing platform not coming from their PSS [Passenger Service System] supplier. A PSS supplier does not know how to do a retailing platform.

“To become a retailer an airline has to have a commercial team thinking retailing, which is the first step. Not all airlines are equipped for the change management this requires.

“Retailing is going to require a certain amount of change. The majority of airlines can only sell the flight ticket. Most are limited to just selling the flight ticket.”

Jorge Diaz, founder and chief executive of AirGateway, said airlines are trying to become retailers. “When it comes to the B-C channel most of them have some retailing support already. But they are trying to achieve full retail status, which is not there.”

Clark added: “There is a vision in the industry that has been discussed over many years about the one stop shop – come to my website, come to my app and you can buy the entirety of you travel. It’s a vision. There are one or two airlines nibbling round the edges of genuinely becoming retailers.”

Dumas said a lot depends on customers and whether airlines are able to meet demands for non-air products with rich content. “They understand to become a retailer it’s not just about the price.

“You are trying to sell an experience and to build the experience. As a customer you want to see the product you are going to buy, touch the product you are going to buy.

“This is where from a retail experience point of view the industry has a lot of progress to make. You sell the image, the product, and the price becomes less important than the experience.”

Dumas said the traditional PNR [Passenger name Record] systems are not ready for this additional content but next generation “super PNRs” One Order does have the potential to make the one stop shop vision a reality.

Clark said: “The question for me is why would an airline even want to become a retailer. The short answer is an airline wants to be as close to their customer as they possibly can be.

“Look at how the airline is structured and where thy are making their money. Today, largely speaking, they are not making money on just the flying part of their operation. They are making money in lots f different places, one is namely loyalty, especially in the US.

“There is a real need for the airline to get closer to the customer. That’s what NDC [New Distribution Capability] is trying to do. We need, from an airline perspective to be as close to the customer as possible. It reduces the marketing costs.

“You get around the GDS and reduce the distribution cost. It is happening. They are showing in real numbers that their direct bookings are going up, globally almost 10 points in the last five years, in the US it’s 11 points.”

Dumas pointed out that still today luggage is the biggest add-on product sold by airlines with the global market for the ancillary worth $1 billion.

And he said aggregators and technology suppliers are trying to help airlines with how to position those sort of products in the booking flow for B-C, agent retailers and offline corporate bookers to maximise profits. He added Low Cost Carriers have “by far” the most capability for retailing than scheduled airlines.

AirGateway works with two of the three major European LCCs which he says have one interface with Amadeus’ Navitaire platform that is moving to NDC. Diaz said: “Full service and low cost carriers will probably meet one day around NDC.”