Who are the key vendors providing technology to airlines and travel sellers?
Technology providers facilitate over a trillion dollars in annual air travel sales. Threedot categorizes them into providers to airlines and to travel sellers, as well as content aggregators:
1. Airline Distribution Technology
This technology enables the creation and distribution of offers. It includes the legacy Passenger Services Systems (PSS) and the modern Offer & Order Management Systems (OMS), as well as NDC APIs and other engines. Key players include Amadeus, Sabre Corporation, PROS, Accelya, FLYR, etc.
2. Air Travel Content Aggregation
These intermediaries aggregate content from multiple airline APIs and deliver a unified feed to travel sellers. They consume legacy EDIFACT content and modern API content (in the NDC format for full-service carriers). Non-GDS players in API aggregation include Travelfusion, Duffel, TPConnects Technologies, Verteil Technologies, and AirGateway, etc.
3. Travel Seller Technology
These booking tools and platforms are used by travel sellers (OTAs, TMCs) to book and service flights and ancillaries. They may consume GDS or API content, or both, and facilitate the servicing of orders. Non-GDS players include Spotnana, KAYAK, Thomalex, SAP Concur, Atriis Technologies, etc.
Navigating this landscape, in terms of technology, functionality, pricing, and legal constraints, is key to improving distribution efficiency and to shifting towards modern retailing. Each layer has a different role, and each player may be active in multiple layers.
Reach out to Glenn Morgan, Eric Léopold, or Shivangi Chaturvedi if you’d like help exploring the air travel distribution technology space.
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