Dear industry colleagues,
I am constantly reminded that the air travel industry is made of passionate, resilient people who continue to prove that in the middle of adversity lies opportunity. I've seen a lot of transformation in my career, and after 24 years of service at ATPCO, I will be retiring at the end of 2020. I'm proud to close out my tenure at ATPCO encouraged and confident that we will rebuild demand and innovate together for an even stronger future.
The market disruption this year led us to work in sprints to meet new industry requirements, while listening to your most important near-term needs for reliability and service. We hear you, and we're responding so we can all build back smarter and stronger through affordable innovation and transformation.
ATPCO is committed to building value-based solutions while providing critical pricing and retailing industry infrastructure. At the half-year mark in July 2020, I detailed many of our immediate COVID industry response and service initiatives; and I'm happy to share that as we bring the year to a close, we continue to add value for you:
Industry solutions
- Launched Architect, a powerful new pricing tool that helps revenue management teams do more with less. Designed with years of industry input, Architect accelerates automation, provides simpler workflows, and manages strategic pricing rules.
- Introduced Rapid Fare Update, a foundational pricing tool provided at no cost to airlines to aid in market recovery. In a single view, carriers can display all their products, allowing them to update, enhance, and publish fares quickly and easily.
- Released Structured UPAs, as a follow up to Reassurance UPAs, to help airlines communicate health and safety measures. Structured UPAs standardize the data format of COVID-19 protocols for more than 300 airlines and 95% of the global flight schedule.
Industry collaboration
- Formed the ATPCO-IATA Joint Tax Governance Group (AITGG) to tackle critical inefficiencies in tax distribution and settlement. With over 30 airlines and systems participating, in 2021 this group will propose and facilitate solutions to optimize end-to-end tax processes with the goal of reducing costs in a non-competitive environment.
- Hosted 300+ airlines and air travel leaders for the New Reality of Flight Shopping Industry Summit. Our virtual summit was held live in September and featured 12 industry roundtables that focused on how we can work together to speed market recovery. All insights and event presentations are free to access and available for all
- Formed the Design Team for Changes and Refunds, which brings together technical experts from airlines, systems, and sales channels to quickly develop automated passenger servicing solutions, like emergency flexibility for conditions on existing tickets, which was rapidly implemented with record adoption by airlines in June.
Key customer services
- Implemented Community Participation in order to provide a more community-oriented structure to deliver a better balance of value for airline customers who access our tools, pricing data, retailing content, and ATPCO services.
- Achieved 99.86% YTD operational reliability and reduced unscheduled outage time by 27.5% year-over-year, meaning you can focus on market strategy and recovery because you can rest assured that ATPCO services will be on and available for you.
- Launched The Foundation, bringing you the latest from ATPCO, including valuable industry insights, products, and key resources to help you recover faster.
I, along with my colleagues at ATPCO, have been humbled and proud to work with many of you as we navigate new sets of challenges together. I have a strong appreciation for ATPCO's commitment and industry stewardship, and feel assured in welcoming Alex Zoghlin, serial entrepreneur and co-founder of the online travel agency Orbitz, to ATPCO as President and CEO effective 1 January.
As we move forward into 2021, we'll continue to simplify the way the industry does business with ATPCO through our community platform and industry collaboration efforts. We encourage you to stay engaged with the industry community and ATPCO, through one-on-one conversations, ongoing industry news updates and industry recovery resources.
Wishing you and yours all the best for a healthy and hopeful 2021,
Rolf Purzer
