Amadeus Master Pricer Agent Fare Families enables agents to make it easier for their customers to compare airlines’ fares and associated booking conditions online.
The solution provides results of up to 200 domestic or international fare recommendations from more than 500 airlines. It then gives agents the option of grouping together fares with similar conditions, but offered by different airlines, into categories or fare families.
For example, non-refundable fares can be grouped together in one family, fares that are refundable but with a penalty into another and fully flexible fares in a third, up to a maximum of six categories.
Amadeus said this improves customer satisfaction ‘by correctly setting the expectation about the conditions attached to certain fares’.
In addition, because agents themselves decide how the fare families are constructed, they can give more visibility to specific air content.
This improves the agent’s ability to direct customers to their most profitable content and upsell higher fares with more flexible conditions.
By adding upselling functionalities, Master Pricer Fare Families helps agents create a similar booking environment to that offered by airlines, improving the consumer’s shopping experience.
Stephane Durand, director, online and leisure, for Amadeus, said: ‘The launch of Master Pricer Fare Families shows Amadeus’s commitment to develop innovative tools that serve both online travel agencies and online sites of travel agencies to increase their merchandise and upselling opportunities, and thus, improve their cash flow.
‘When airlines have displayed fare families in this way, within three months they have seen online revenues increase by 30% and online yields increase by 8% on average.
‘In the case of travel agencies, this means, first, more revenue and improved cash flow and ultimately, higher yields.’
The solution is available now for online travel agents and agencies with an online presence. An offline version will be available by the end of 2010.
See also:
Amadeus consolidates fare tool (10/12/2009)
GDS woos package providers (02/12/2009)
Amadeus unveils ‘intuitive’ search solution (18/11/2009)
Amadeus enhances e-Travel Management (06/02/2009)