Tools for recording carbon data and the reduction of carbon emissions are becoming increasingly important for global and sustainable business travel. We spoke to the German company SQUAKE about digital solutions for reducing CO2 consumption ..read more

In an increasingly globalized business world, sustainable business travel becomes more and more important. How can software solutions support companies ..read more

There was a time when you had a GDS terminal and could quickly serve customers in the green screen with learned cryptic commands. No special treatments for low-cost carriers, no additional fees from airlines, no additional services and no customers who could simply compare on the internet, all fares and bookings / PNRs were more or less available in one central place. And today? Time to Rethink! If Not Already Done… As the much quoted quotation from Leon C. Megginson based on the research findings of Charles Darwin says: „It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most in ..read more

Many times I am asked: “What are the characteristics of a good, flexible, modern Online Booking Tool (OBT) for travel?” Some of the existing ones carry a lot of baggage, which makes them less flexible. They are and in constant competition with rapidly changing consumer applications. But those ‘legacy’ OBTs provide stability, even though they may not look nice. Manufacturers try to facelift or re-develop them, but I ask the question: Does a business travel online booking tool really need to be fancy and compete with all the consumer apps out there? Obviously, today there is a lot of talking ab ..read more

A data warehouse (DWH) can support decision-making. We show you how. As the saying goes, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” It is the same in the business travel sector. The basis for this is the collection and consolidation of data in order to obtain the relevant information. Data Warehouse for Travel Management The collection point for the various data gathered from different sources is called a data warehouse. The data warehouse is more or less the foundation on which decisions are made, negotiations are conducted, or successes are measured and processes are optimized with the aim o ..read more

Travel topics explained in a simple way: Today we take a look at the difference between direct and indirect airline distribution. Also, we talk about the topic “GDS bypass vs. GDS passthrough”. In many cases NDC is mistakenly used for direct distribution. NDC is a data standard. NDC is explained in details in the following Blogs: “What is NDC?”, “ The reality behind NDC” and “NDC – the next curtain”. When it comes to airlines, direct and indirect distribution is quite simple to explain: Direct distribution is when the traveler books his flight directly with the airline. In the indirect channel ..read more

If airlines only had one single price, in order to cover operating costs, the price needs to be high. Which would lead to that no one could actually fly. We explore the question of how continuous pricing – enabled by NDC – compares to static dynamic pricing. Even if airlines only had a single price for each cabin (first, business and economy), the price per cabin would still be high.Consequently, only a few people could afford to fly, which would lead to inefficient capacity utilization as no-one would be able to determine how much an optimal price would need to be in order to fill up the airc ..read more

Travel Topics Explained in a Simple Way: Let’s Talk About the Data Standard New Distribution Capability (NDC). Dear Readers, during a tough year with a global pandemic which cost the travel industry according to IATA in excess of $118 billion, I was under the impression, no-one would be interested in educational stories about travel technology. Hopefully, we have better times ahead of us. Hence, I decided to continue my series with focus on necessary technology improvements such as NDC and ONE Order. NDC is to become the standard for airline distribution of the 21st century. As mentioned in my ..read more

It’s no secret that the COVID-19 pandemic is redefining business travel. One of the changes is the increased importance on Travel Risk Management. This is reflected in studies but also in the work of the International Standards Organization (ISO), which is currently working on a new ISO 31030 (Travel Risk Management – Guidance for Organization). TMCs and risk management companies can be a great support for the organizations. PASS provides the booking data for preventive and active risk identification. When restrictions are lifted and companies start to travel more, duty of care responsibilitie ..read more

Many companies today align their software development with the DevOps model. But saving time alone is not enough, security aspects must be included from the very beginning – keyword: DevSecOps. The second article in my series “Time to Production” has shown the optimization potential that system operation and administration can achieve through close cooperation with development, QA and product managers as well as consistent use of tools. However, it is too short-sighted to use a deployment pipeline to make new code available to users in real time: the pipeline should also deliver a secure appli ..read more