Amadeus has unveiled its roadmap for what it sees to be the future of airline retailing.
Amadeus Nevio promises to be a cutting-edge airline technology and solutions platform designed to be smarter, more efficient, and highly adaptable. Its modular and simplified approach revolves around dynamic ‘offer and order’ standards (very similar to NDC).
Cyril Tetaz, Executive Vice President of Airline Solutions and Travel Unit at Amadeus, told Travel News that the initiative aimed to revolutionise processes related to offers, orders and delivery, with a primary focus on enhancing the overall customer experience.
“Airlines need to become better retailers to increase their revenue. With Amadeus Nevio we enable airlines to make traveller-centric retailing a reality from end-to-end,” said Tetaz.
He explained: “Amadeus Nevio provides an entirely new generation of simplified and modular retailing technology, that works completely independently of the PSS, and is built around dynamic offers and new order standards to transform the whole value chain of an airline’s business – including payment and operations.”
Traveller-centric retailing
Amadeus Nevio incorporates the latest advances in AI to help airlines personalise every aspect of the offers they make. With Nevio, an airline can package an offer covering every step of a journey, including vast possible combinations of its own and partner inventory.
Said Tetaz: “With ‘smart bridging’ we can support airlines to move from tickets and PNRs to offers and orders in a way that ensures business continuity. Amadeus Nevio covers the entire end-to-end traveller experience but is modular by design. That means airlines are in control and can choose the capabilities that are right for them and their business markets. With Nevio, airlines can approach transformation, their way.
“That’s how we’re going to transform. That and adding the opportunity to create offers in a much more dynamic way, which will then be powered by NDC. So essentially they’re complementary” said Tetaz.
Iata’s NDC (New Distribution Capability) technology standard is one capability within Nevio, which is designed to be modular.
But airlines don’t necessarily have to have developed NDC in order to start working on moving away from other elements hampering the move to more modern distribution of tickets, such as passenger name records (PNRs) and electronic miscellaneous documents (EMDs).
Tetaz questioned the necessity for conventional elements. “Why do we need a check-in window? Why do we need a boarding pass? Why do we need yet another record? If we have one order record that encapsulates everything, replacing ticket, PNR, EMD – why can’t we use that order record as the basis to fly you?
“All these elements of a booking will land in a single record. That record will be cascaded to the partners for delivery. If there’s change, everybody will be aware of it. If you have a disruption, what you want, and what we aim to do, is to be able to reaccommodate the entirety of the trip,” said Tetaz.
