As Southwest Airlines’ entry into the Travelport and Amadeus
GDSs grows closer, the stakeholders involved -- Southwest, the GDSs and travel
management companies (TMCs) -- are looking forward to the benefits that will
result from the change.
“Selling Southwest, we, to be perfectly honest, looked at it
as a necessary evil if we go back a year ago,” said Jeff Klee, CEO and
co-founder of AmTrav (No. 43 on Travel Weekly’s 2019 Power List). “Southwest
really did a complete 180, and both we and our customers are thrilled about it.”
Southwest announced its distribution strategy change last
August. The pivot to making Southwest fares fully available to TMCs via GDS
hearkens back to the company’s early history in the 1970s when it was focused
on business travelers in the Texas Triangle of Dallas, San Antonio and Houston,
said Dave Harvey, vice president of Southwest Business.
Its goal back then was to get more Texans off the road and
into the air.
Now, as it approaches its 50th anniversary in 2021,
Southwest is “getting back to our roots,” Harvey said.
Southwest has had limited participation in the GDS channel.
Until it goes live in Travelport’s three GDSs (Apollo, Galileo and Worldspan),
which is forecast for the second quarter, followed by Amadeus, Southwest fares
have only been available in Sabre. In Sabre’s GDS, agents can book some
Southwest fares but cannot make modifications to the bookings. In Travelport
and Amadeus, agents will be able to book all fares and make changes.
In the past, Klee said, AmTrav has offered Southwest to its
customers in a variety of ways, such as using combinations of application
program interfaces and manual processes.
“But there’s always been a lot of duct tape required and a
lot of inconsistencies between what the experience would be online and offline,
and frankly, a lot of extra work for the agents,” he said.
AmTrav is far from the only player interested in accessing
Southwest fares in the GDS environment.
Harvey said, “There are a lot of buyers who want
industry-standard GDS capabilities,” such as standard ticketing and settlement
through ARC. “That’s just how they built their program. All their midoffice,
back office, that’s how they work with their TMC. We were missing out on a huge
opportunity not serving those customers the way that they wanted to engage and
do business with Southwest.”
Jason Toothman, head of agency sales and corporate accounts
for the Americas for Travelport, agreed that the opportunity was there.
Travelport has long heard from agency customers who wanted to sell Southwest in
the same way they sell other carriers -- in the traditional GDS environment.
Amadeus’ agency customers reacted to the news last year
positively, said Ilia Kostov, senior vice president of global accounts and
business travel for the Americas. That level of positivity and enthusiasm has
remained.
In addition to benefits for booking agents, corporations
will also see upsides, Kostov predicted, including more booking efficiencies,
meaning lower costs that are typically passed on to the corporate traveler.
Amadeus, in particular, will help broaden Southwest’s reach
to TMCs, according to Kostov. Many of the largest global TMCs have publicly
said they are only working with Sabre and Amadeus, not Travelport, so their
Amadeus affiliation will give them access to Southwest.
Southwest will first go live in Travelport’s GDSs. To that
end, Southwest and Travelport recently co-hosted a summit for select TMCs in
late February to discuss plans and initiate a dialogue among the stakeholders.
Toothman said the summit is indicative of the unique level
of collaboration Travelport has with Southwest on its new distribution plan.
Klee said he believes that having Southwest readily
available in the GDS environment will result in an increase in sales for the
carrier.
“Every TMC has been selling Southwest with one hand tied
behind their back,” Klee said. “And I think putting them on par from the
standpoint of the ease of sale and making everything about Southwest equal to
the other airlines, especially in the domestic market, I’d be shocked if it
doesn’t move the needle on market share.”