When kulula.com took the bold decision to exit all GDSs earlier this month, agents that weren’t already using one of the airline’s four API connections had to scramble for a new way to access kulula’s content. Reactions from the trade to the decision have been mixed.
eTravel md, Tammy Hunt, told Travel News that kulula’s decision wasn’t good news for eTravel ITCs, who preferred to use the GDS.
Owner of Sure Map Travel, Melissa Philips, concurred, saying kulula was now “out of sight” for many consultants and it was therefore also “out of mind”. She said she was also concerned about how the decision would impact customers when it came to the carrier’s regular schedule changes.
“Last week, one of our customers flew with kulula with a ticket that was booked online. The client was not even notified of the schedule changes that were made to his ticket. This used to be so easy for us to keep track of in the GDS,” said Melissa.
Meanwhile, Tourvest Travel Service ceo, Morné du Preez, said he was delighted with the decision. He said TTS offered its consultants access to what he believed was the largest content aggregator in South Africa. As one of only four aggregators holding kulula API integrations, Tourvest held an advantage in the market at present, he told Travel News.
Morné said agents not making use of Tourvest’s TravelIT now had to either access kulula’s content from a third party or be forced to exit the GDS, log on to kulula’s website to make a booking and then integrate it into their back-end systems. The time-consuming nature of this process meant that kulula bookings would now have become expensive transactions for agents to process. Tourvest consultant workflows, which automatically processed all of these functions, had been undisturbed by kulula’s decision, according to Morné.
Ceo of travel tech company Go4IT Africa, James Elstob, said kulula’s decision was in line with the rapid movement to direct bookings that was taking place in the market. He said it was also indicative of how the status of the large GDSs had changed dramatically in recent years.
Ceo of Asata, Otto de Vries, said he recognised that kulula’s decision was in line with global airline trends to move off the GDS and cut down on distribution costs. However, he said he was also cognisant of the situation where many agents who had suddenly been left without a workable solution to access the airline’s content, were now having to disrupt their ordinary workflow processes to book the airline.
“My concern is that this may isolate a large number of agents who remain heavily reliant on the GDS and who have not yet had the resources and opportunity to manage third-party API integrations. This may result in these agents offselling the airline. One would assume that kulula has done its research before implementing this strategy, and that it is based on analysis of data showing where the majority of its bookings are coming from,” said Otto.
