Technology that coordinates all stakeholders in airline distribution will be vital as the sector adopts next generation digital retailing, according to low cost carrier Vueling.

Speaking at the UATP Airline Distribution 2025 summit, Catia Silva. distribution, strategy and payments manager at the Spanish carrier said airline IT needs to completely change.

She said she “believes in offer order” management, the emerging way of airlines selling their products and services, and IATA’s New Distribution Capability (NDC) was a first step towards that.

But she said “we come back again to the same challenge of the IT structure” and the regulatory framework that governs Global Distribution Systems (GDS), airlines, agencies and Travel Management Companies (TMCs).

“It will be easier for LCCs to adapt to offers and orders. There will be some challenges in coordinating all of the stakeholders and the revenue management, payments and forex.

“In the airline environment all departments should be working closely to properly deliver offer order. In the end our objective is to be transparent and to sell to our customers.

“We need to create on unique order for all the steps of the journey. All merchant acquirers in the payments process must adapt to that new situation.

“There are two pain points that we will face. The first is currency conversion for LCCs, the second one is settlement with offers orders.

“Airlines, TMCs and agencies will need to push payment providers to develop, and work closely with them to develop, the payments processes that should be seamless and transparent.”

David Gunnarsson, chief executive of virtual interlining specialist Dohop, said the industry needs to consider the full end-to-end customer journey and expectation of a digital delivery.

“Consumers expect everything is delivered that way in the airline world, like they do for a taxi, but in aviation that is very difficult.

“If you think about data and how to access data between airlines, airports, and different booking channels, this is mostly siloed. Even within an airline we have data siloes.

“There must be a vision of everything being easy and seamless. You can imagine never having to take out your phone or passport, being biometrically identified as you walk into the airport.

“Delivering that is a whole different story. But I think we are starting to see pieces of that. There are challenges around technology and the different states those tech systems are in.

“We can deliver everything we need to the customer, but what if the systems fail. What do we fall back on?”

Focussing on the end-to-end journey requires airlines to take a more intermodal approach with rail and other ground transport providers integrated into their offer.

Joe Tibble, vice president, air and connectivity partnerships at travel management and expense specialist Navan, said it has to match airline strategy and customer expectations.

“If I’m a traveller I want to make sure someone is servicing me with the right offer. How do I validate that’s the right offer, that’s something that the airlines are trying to work out.

“As a TMC we sit in them middle. We have to make sure we understand what the airline strategy is and versus what our users expect.

“What’s important to us as a third party is understanding what that vision is and investing time and energy in developing a product that works for our users.

“Adapting to that is paramount to our success. The vision of NDC a some point was a standard, but that’s clearly divided as airlines continued to evolve.

“Airline content is a currency and we are not entitled to their content. But we have to adapt. If we focus on our customer we have been able to make inroads with our airline partners.”

Tina Larson, managing director, distribution, sales strategy ad alliances at Hawaiian Airlines, said: “We have been pretty busy in our quest to modern retailing. It’s been pretty exciting to see some of the advances.

“From a revenue management perspective, we are going away from legacy static pricing to more evolving offer management strategies using advanced analytics and really embracing AI and machine learning to really harness all of the data we have on our customers.

“We are seeing a lot of dynamic pricing, continuous pricing, driving revenue. We have a way to go in terms of knowing who this customer is and what are their preferences, but we are getting better at segmentation, targeting offers using loyalty entitlements. I’m still a big believer in NDC.”

Chuck Fisher, vice president of distribution and financial services at ARC, said the industry should not let “perfection be the enemy of the good”.

“Omnichannel is enabling the customer to book, buy, shop, service in what ever channel is most convenient for them at any point in that entire journey. We are making progress on that front.

“It’s a new world now. We have to make sure we are delivering that optimal experience to the customer.

“It’s about convenience, consistency and transparency. As changes are being made make sure you are pushing that information back out to all those partners in the chain.”