Incoming CEO of Airlines-Backed ARC Sees Direct Bookings as Growth Area
Photo Credit: Some passengers at a United Airlines lounge at LaGuardia airport in New York City. Corporate travelers may see smoother handling of bookings they make directly if ARC's new CEO broadens the airline-owned company's scope. United
Skift Take
Airlines Reporting Corporation's expansion into providing services around direct bookings is intriguing. We'll be watching how it handles the challenge without vexing the travel agencies that will remain its core customer.
Until now Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC) had focused on settling transactions between travel agencies and airlines. Yet incoming CEO Lauri Reishus sees a new growth area for the company, namely, helping serve bookings that travelers make directly with airlines.
ARC said Thursday that Reishus, executive vice president and chief operating officer, will become CEO, replacing Mike Premo. The transition will happen in 2021.
The CEO change comes at a time when ARC's role has become murkier.
ARC settles more than $94 billion in transactions a year between 240 airlines and about 12,000 travel agencies. Yet some airlines are more eager to drive direct bookings than indirect ones. Direct bookings poses a challenge for ARC, which in 2018 made a majority of its approximately $140 million in revenue from fees for settling plane tickets booked through agencies.[caption id="attachment_369278" align="alignleft" width="240"] Lauri Reishus, executive vice president and chief operating off
