ATPCO has been around for 53 years, and its first
acquisition didn't come until 2018. "I thought that ATPCO was like the IRS
of the industry," joked the seller, Routehappy founder and CEO Robert
Albert. He may not be alone in casting ATPCO as a glamour-less piece of legacy
airline infrastructure. Yet, like airline distribution itself, the
airline-owned entity is undergoing a digital transformation.
When Purzer joined in early 2017, he set out to modernize
ATPCO, and the Routehappy acquisition represents a pivotal moment in its
transition from a mainframe-based clearinghouse of fare and rules data to a
cloud-based enabler of "retailing, customized offers, rich content,
dynamic pricing in all channels, and that includes NDC," Purzer said.
Launched in 2011, Routehappy has scores of customers,
including distributors, online travel agencies, corporate booking systems and
airlines that tap into its airline amenity data. Expedia, Google and Sabre are
among them. It also operates the Routehappy Hub, which helps airlines like
Delta and United manage and distribute photos, product descriptions and service
attributes on their flights. Routehappy has become the closest thing to an
industry standard for the management of airline rich content and amenity data,
an admitted gap for ATPCO.
Further, Purzer said, "Our target was to absorb some of
their much more agile culture, and we are intentionally trying to implement
that and change the genes of ATPCO." To that end, ATPCO and Routehappy
teams are collaborating on product development, especially where ancillary
airline products, rich content and retailing meet. ATPCO and Routehappy this
year kicked off the Next Generation Storefront, which has been piloted with
large U.S. carriers to bring more consistent characterizations of airline
product offerings to shoppers, "similar to what happens in the hotel industry
where you shop two-star or three-star hotels," said Purzer. "The
industry has to decide what are these like-type airline products and services
that can be put into a category—maybe good, better, best or one-star, two-star,
three-star—and to place that in all channels but particularly the indirect
channels so that comparison shopping is made available." The endeavor is
just beginning, and industry stakeholders will hash out the particulars, with
ATPCO as a facilitator and technology enabler.
Further, in its push to modernize and stay
relevant in next-generation airline distribution, ATPCO and SITA launched the
NDC Exchange, a translation layer that lets airlines, travel sellers and others
in the ecosystem more easily consume application programming interfaces that
align with the New Distribution Capability standard. Air Canada, British
Airways and United, as well as travel sellers and tech companies, are using it.