Irish company Datalex, which provides travel distribution software and solutions has partnered with international air transport IT specialist, SITA, to release a new airline sales and service portal.
SITA’s new Horizon E-Commerce platform allows airlines to offer new shopping and merchandising features to customers whilst they’re purchasing flight tickets online.
Ancilliary services
According to the 2012 SITA/Airline Business Airline IT Trends Survey, almost all airlines now sell tickets through their web sites and over 70% also sell ancillary services, like hotels and car rentals. Within three years this is forecast to increase to over 90%.
Horizon E-Commerce is already used by 30 airlines worldwide and the new service will work in real time to provide flexible searching and suggest relevant offers to passengers by continually monitoring their input into an airline’s website. The system allows flights as well as multiple extra services to be purchased in one single transaction. The e-commerce platform on with the system works is supplied by Datalex.
“Horizon E-Commerce enables airlines to offer more services to customers, more channels to deliver their business, more intelligence to understand their business, greater efficiency and lower cost”, said Allison O’Neill, vice president passenger solutions, SITA.
Société Internationale de Télécommunications Aéronautiques (SITA) was founded by 11 airlines in 1949 and is a specialist in air transport communications and IT solutions, and has 2,700 customers in more than 200 countries and territories.
Datalex provides travel booking software to airlines around the world including Air China, Aerlingus, Continental and United Airlines. Founded in 1985, the company is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, and maintains offices across Europe, the USA and Asia-Pacific.
