Consulting For B2B Travel Tech

For the past several months, I've immersed myself in the world of airline distribution transformation for my consulting work. I am not working with an airline on digital transformation, but on Marketing strategy with a B2B SaaS player enabling distribution transformation through their technology solutions.

Developing and implementing the GTM strategy has given me a ringside view to this fairly complex and niche industry, that is full of TLAs - NDC, GDS, PSS, IFG etc. Airline distribution transformation, or modern airline retailing, is at a stage where the shift over to products with better customer experience (B2B), transparency, and accessibility of data is still at a nascent stage of adoption.

Here's what I find interesting in the inherent challenges as compared to the rest of the world of B2B SaaS tools:

1. The technology standards are governed by a global body and there are quarterly updates. This poses challenges for the SaaS companies developing solutions as they need to adhere to these technology standards and ensure that their APIs perform as expected.

2. Both players in this industry, airlines and travel agencies, are on a learning curve and adoption is a challenge for both. It's a bit of a chicken and egg as to who should adopt first, but for a B2B SaaS product, success is not possible unless both stakeholders adopt the tech.

3. The incumbent technology platform (GDS) is virtually a monopoly and there are multiple SaaS startups competing in a minority play in the new platform (NDC) to build their business.

4. The new technology itself is not fully developed and airlines have different versions, which are XML based, making it a challenge for travel agencies to integrate with many different versions. This has opened the door for the startups who deliver SaaS aggregation solutions for both ends of the ecosystem.

5. Things that are taken for granted in other industries, such as personalisation, quick time-to-market, product differentiation through rich content formats, are still not a thing for the B2B airline retailing world. This is what the new technology hopes to solve, but still has ways to go.

All of this requires a dynamic marketing strategy. Marketing is only as good as the product, but the B2B SaaS company does not control the technology standards on which they build their products.

As a layperson, I might not have described certain things precisely. It's such a fantastic learning experience though and a challenging marketing strategy to build. It's also fascinating to understand the journey from a travel search to a boarding pass!