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Airfare Data Firm ATPCO Recalibrates for Post-Pandemic Flying

Matthew Parsons
Emirates

Photo Credit: Airlines are getting more creative in how they price and bundle their airfares. Unsplash / Toa Heftiba

Skift Take

Rather than guessing how people will compare flights and shop in the future, it's going to focus on giving travel agencies and other channels the right airline data via its next generation storefront, and let them figure it out. It makes perfect sense in today's unpredictable world.

If there’s one skill the pandemic has sharpened, it’s the art of online shopping. It's also the mission of airfare data firm ATPCO (formerly known as the Airline Tariff Publishing Company). Its Routehappy division helps airlines improve the way they display information when retailing seats, while its so-called next generation storefront allows agencies and other sellers to sort and group increasingly complex airline fares. However, coronavirus and other factors have upended the storefront's priorities. A New Chapter “There’s been a bit of a pause on the development,” said Seth Anagnostis, Routehappy’s head of retailing. “When we set out, our intent was to provide a visual, visceral way of seeing what modern flight shopping is like. We map out consistent shelves, to compare airline A’s product to airline’s B data on a particular flight.”

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At first, the idea was to define how airlines compare their products — for example, does the seat have a screen? — on different routes, but Anagnostis said it ended up with a scenario where there were going to be so many permutations of what the different "shelves" needed to look like. Now ATPCO will focus on creating the best standards via its storefront platform, and leave it to agencies and other sellers to choose for themselves how to make those comparisons for their specific customers. A corporate online booking tool will probably want to be able to display different airfare features compared to how a leisure-focused metasearch website sells tickets. "For example, if a business traveler did

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