flyiin has built a new distribution model “from scratch”, based on the International Air Transport Association’s latest distribution standard, known as New Distribution Capability (NDC), and is ready to enter a beta phase with Lufthansa Group as its first partner airline.
flyiin claims it has built a superior alternative to online travel agencies and travel meta-search engines. “Cutting out these middle men, flyiin offers travellers greater transparency regarding airlines’ entire product offering – including ancillary services like checked baggage or preferred seating – as well as up-to-the-minute fare information directly from partner airlines,” it said.
During the beta phase, flyiin will commercialise Lufthansa Group’s flights, including bundled fares and ancillary services. flyiin will provide Lufthansa Group airlines with detailed information about how they interact with their products and recommendations on how to retail and market their entire portfolio of flights and services.
“We believe partnering with flyiin’s technologically advanced, NDC-based distribution model will improve our ability to retail the full spectrum of fares and services we can offer, and enable us to gain greater insight into travellers’ needs,” said Arber Deva, head of direct distribution solutions, Lufthansa Group.
flyiin is expecting to get out of beta testing by August 2018.
flyiin’s CEO Stéphane Pingaud is confident flyiin is unique and has a competitive edge in the market.
“We haven’t seen any consumer-facing online companies – whether OTAs or meta-
“This model will become the norm” – Pingaud
search engines – building a 100% API-based digital product as we have. flyiin is building a completely new model from scratch” said Pingaud.
“Instead of using search and booking technology from a GDS like all OTAs and meta-search companies do, we are building our own “distribution system” based on the aggregation and normalisation of airlines’ APIs. With this approach, we are calling directly the airlines for their fares and offers for every search request which ensures that fares and flight information are always up-to-date, valid and in the future, possibly personalised,” explained Pingaud.
He added that user experience will also be enhanced since its proprietary distribution technology allows them flexibility and opportunity to re-think the shopping process and include services such as number of bags to check in, selection of seats, flexibility of fares, access to lounges and others. It will also be able to reflect to the traveller, the total cost of the flight – including the cost of services requested.
“Since there is no intermediary between airlines and our marketplace users, we will define with the airlines a new business model that reflects the “semi-direct” nature of our distribution channel,” said Pingaud.
And if this proves successful, Pingaud says this model will become the norm between airlines and their distributors.
It will be marketing itself within Europe to begin.
“We feel Europe is a very good market for us because it is highly competitive, has quality airline products and services, and has a huge diversity of commercial approaches by the airlines – with fare families, ancillary services and such. This makes comparing total costs of flights increasingly complicated for air travellers,” said flyiin’s CEO Stéphane Pingaud, in an interview with WIT.
flyiin was founded in 2016 by travel tech industry veteran Stéphane Pingaud and digital experience expert Marco Spies, pitched as “an online marketplace enabling travellers to search for and purchase flights and related services directly from airlines.”
