The pace with which retailing continues to evolve means random selling of air ancillaries and non-air ancillary products won’t work or pay off in the future.
JetBlue said the move will mark the first part of a new “online distribution strategy.” It will focus on booking directly through its own website and “select third-party channels”.
Gekko includes two hotel booking platforms — Teldar Travel and HCorpo, aiming to add adjacent businesses that can complement its core hotel operations and offer more control of hotel distribution.
TravelClick forecasts that travel agents will make 68 million hotel reservations in the Amadeus, Sabre and Travelport systems this year, surpassing 2016’s total by 2 million.
The latest Ancillary Revenue Yearbook by IdeaWorks and CarTrawler reveals that the top ten airlines has leapt to more than $28 billion, compared with only $2.1 billion in 2007.
Duetto's Michael thought hotels should avoid acquiring guests by sacrificing prices and recognize the need for balanced distribution.
A decade from now, revenue passenger miles are forecasted to grow by 30% by 2027, the number of aircraft in operation is likely to grow by the same factor, and airlines will have to become sophisticated retailers.
For the first fiscal quarter ended June 30, 2017, revenue increased 54.6% YoY in 1Q18 to $192.1 million; revenue from hotels and packages business increased by 40.8% (37.3% in constant currency) to $134.6 million.
