The Flight Centre Travel Group (FCTG) has reinforced its commitment to providing customers with the widest choice of airfares by increasing its investment in travel technology business TPConnects Technologies (TPC).
FCTG has acquired a majority stake in TPC after an initial investment for a 22 per cent stake two years ago. Flight Centre now owns 70 per cent of the Dubai-based business. The company has been working with the Dubai-based Software as a Service (SaaS) business since 2019 and says that the NDC specialist has been at “the forefront of ongoing changes to traditional distribution models.”
FCTG initially invested in TPC with a view to supercharging the development of TPC’s innovative technology platform, which aggregates content from multiple sources including Global distribution systems (GDSs), which airlines traditionally utilized to distribute air content; Low-cost carriers (LCCs); emerging supplier-direct channels, specifically airlines’ New Distribution Capability (NDC) offerings; and other third party NDC aggregators.
TPC has a proven track record in NDC and provides a centralized NDC Gateway which services customers in both the aviation and travel agency sectors. The business offers travel agents a range of solutions to access aggregated air content via the TPC Universal API (application programing interface), which can be directly integrated into any user interface, or via agency business-to-business (B2B) platforms such as the NDCmarketplace portal. For airline customers, TPC offers advanced NDC solutions via its middleware offer and order management services.
Chris Galanty, Global CEO of Flight Centre Corporate believes FCTG’s increased stake in TP Connects firmly positions the company’s corporate businesses at the forefront of the developments that are taking place in the distribution landscape.
“As airlines continue to disrupt the way in which they distribute their content, we recognize the need to be able to offer a seamless and integrated experience for our clients that gathers the broadest range of relevant content through all available channels,” said Galanty.
“By strengthening our investment and deepening our alliance with TP Connects, we are able to leverage their expertise and NDC-enabled technology to enhance our ability to service our corporate customers and meet their travel programme aims both in terms of options and value.
“In this dynamic environment, it’s critical that we continuously evolve innovative solutions that complement our GDS partnerships and keep us a step ahead from our competitors now and in the future – and our collaboration with TP Connects does just that.”
In utilizing TPC technology, the company’s corporate customers automatically benefit from the widest choice of global content, access to best available rates as well as exclusive private fares – all fully supported by expert travel consultants.
Melanie Waters-Ryan, Flight Centre’s CEO of leisure and supply, says: “Within this ever-changing distribution landscape, we have taken proactive steps to complement our GDS partnerships and ensure we can source and deliver the best content to our leisure and corporate customers globally by investing in TPC.
“TPC has been at the heart of the evolution in airfare distribution during the past decade, is now engrained in our business and is integral to the new operating systems and platforms we are delivering in both the leisure and corporate sectors.
Other potential commercial benefits to FCTG include:
• Lower costs – the ability to cost effectively access and book a broad range of NDC content via TPC and avoid the surcharges that some airlines are now applying to bookings made via GDSs. FLT can also access TPC content at a lower rate than it pays to aggregation competitors
• Margin improvement, through access to TPC’s margin management tools and ability to control decisions relating to where air content is sourced from
• Access to NDC-related incentives that airlines are increasingly offering to their travel agency partners
• Enhanced ability to offer and distribute exclusive private fares for airlines; and
• Access to new revenue streams through TPC’s offerings to airlines and other travel agency groups
TPConnects’ founders Rajendran Vellapalath and Praveen Kumar will remain involved in the business and become part of a new TPC board. FLT’s involvement in TPC allowed the company to become the first global travel management company to receive International Air Transport Association (IATA) Level 4 certification, the highest level available at the time (achieved in 2020).
“FCTG’s investment comes at an important time, given the rapid changes that are taking place in the distribution of air content and with the development of the Airline Retailing Maturity Index (ARM index), which IATA is now pioneering,” Vellapalath said.
“This is one of the biggest industry disruptions in recent years, with NDC and IATA’s new ONE Order customer record system at its core. The strong relationship between TPC and FCTG will ensure that both companies remain at the forefront of this ongoing change and play a lead role in the future evolution of distribution,” he added.
Alongside TPC, FCTG’s corporate businesses continue to leverage its significant technology investments to improve customer experience and meet the needs of business travelers in the pandemic era. These include the acquisitions of booking technology specialist WhereTo, mobile chatbot platform Sam, and most recently, the Shep browser extension tool.
“We are proud of our reputation as a leader in the tech travel space, borne through a strategy of continuous development and complementary investment and acquisition. By integrating innovative solutions such as TP Connects into our already powerful platform capabilities, we are better able to support our corporate clients and propel their businesses forward in this changed world,” added Galanty.
