Thursday, July 20, 2006

Travolution@NBTA in Chicago - Part 5: More on Farelogix

SAS, Swiss and Lufthansa have all agreed to create a direct connection to Farelogix, Dave Cerino, the firm's chief marketing and product officer told Travolution in an exclusive interview.

The news comes on the heels of Farelogix's agreement with Emirates (read previous blog entry), which became the first international carrier outside of North America to create a direct connection with the next-generation distribution firm.

Farelogix, which already holds similar agreements with major US carriers American, Continental and Northwest, has been a target of criticism by the leading GDSs, which insist that the GNEs do not pose a serious competitive threat, particularly because they are limited to content agreements with North American carriers.

In light of this recent development that argument no longer holds water.

If Farelogix or one of the other alternative distribution companies manages to plug the hole in the UK market through a deal with BA, for example, then things will get really interesting.

Tricia Holly Davis, freelance journalist in Chicago

1 comment:

Steve E said...

Well I for one think it's great to see someone offering a direct connect distribution platform. Some of the existing GDS' are a bit dinosaur like these days and could do with a shake up from a newcomer!

The first people (or maybe they already exist) who create a flexible distribution platform that accepts all sorts of feeds (xml, direct, file upload) from all sorts of suppliers and distributes through a well formed API will be on to a winner!