Hi, I’m Mike McCormick and I’m here for another Travel Again snapshot. I’m here with Carlos Mesa from Arajet. We were on a panel together here at the CAPA Airline Leader Summit in Trinidad. It was a terrific panel yesterday with a lot of insight. I think we got a great response from the audience talking all about retailing and the future of retailing here in the Caribbean. From your perspective Carlos, what are your takeaways from the panel yesterday?
Thank you to be here with your audience. Great panel, great audience too. Distribution is something that is on top of the priorities in the industry, especially on the airline side. We as Arajet are working to build low-fare hubs in the Caribbean. We are flying right now to 22 destinations in 16 countries of the region, so we have a huge challenge in terms of how we can add or share with the customer the right fare at the right time in the right channel. That means that we need to work not just with the travel agencies; we need to work with OTAs, with GDSs, and with other channels that the customers are searching when they try to have a ticket.
I think we talked a lot on the panel about the whole ecosystem needing to be involved and that expression about the long tail. There is just so much involved, certainly throughout the region, with having the travel agencies involved, the airports involved, and government authorities. It is a lot harder and a lot more complex in terms of the whole ecosystem—airports, every aspect—needing to be a part of this. It is not just an airline and customer equation. Tell me a little more about that from your perspective too.
We discussed yesterday that from an airline’s perspective, it’s always better that the customer go direct to the webpage and buy the tickets, but it’s not that simple. The ecosystem is really big. We have a lot of infrastructure, a lot of IT software, webpages, and tour operators. We have GDS, we have NDC, we have IATA involved. It is a big ecosystem behind the distributions, and that is the challenge that not just Arajet has in the region, but the challenge that all the airlines and the travel agencies have too, because it is in both ways.
In terms of what is coming for the future and how we see the process in the industry, I think that in terms of Arajet, we are near to signing an agreement with a big GDS in the world. We are working now with Hahn Air and the world ticketing in that way. We are on the GDS, but we want to be as Arajet in the GDS ecosystems. That means that we need to work in an NDC process. That is another huge channel that we need to have in terms of systems interfaces and training for all the staff. That is coming in our following months. We are near to starting in the US market too; that is another big channel that we have. We are splitting the operation between Santo Domingo and Punta Cana with two hubs, so that is another part of the cake that we need to try to understand who is going to eat that. That’s funny, and that is the thing that we are doing, so that is something that we are working on.
We said in the session that two or three years from now, NDC will be a teenager, 13 years in the making. What do you think we’ll be talking about in a couple of years from now?
Definitely we need to expedite the process to approach the NDC and the GDS. If you start an airline, you need to wait a lot to be on the GDS and try to certify the NDC process, so it should be easier in the future for sure. I think that AI behind is something that is coming. AI is approaching in most different areas, and probably AI is going to help us and give another hand and brains in terms of how we can build the distribution ecosystems and how we’re going to fight with the big players in the region. For sure, it is something that we need to have.
Very good. Well, thank you again Carlos, and thanks for being part of the panel and great meeting you here at CAPA. Thank you. Take care.