The client
Gulf Air – national airline of the Kingdom of Bahrain. Mid-size airline operating in Asia, Europe & Africa.
Challenge we helped to solve
We helped Gulf Air address the limitations of legacy technology on customer experience and the need to keep up with the demands of an increasingly digitally savvy customer base.
Business outcomes we delivered
A platform that puts customers’ needs first and the foundation to advance Gulf Air’s modern air retailing aspirations:
- Platform modularity & NDC connectivity, that improves customer experience and unlocks commercial opportunities across all channels.
- An industry-first holiday solution that allows customers to shop for flights via NDC, and hotels in a single holiday package.
- Transformation of Gulf Air technology has been a catalyst for them to deliver on growth objectives.
Challenge
The constraints of legacy technology on customer experience
2018 was known as a “year of change” for Gulf Air, as leadership focused on building long-term growth through measures such as a brand refresh, improvement of the inflight product, expansion of its fleet size, and network development. Continuing the momentum, in 2019, Gulf Air unveiled a ‘boutique’ strategy to bolster long-term profitability by focusing on differentiated products and services.
Gulf Air executives were keenly aware of the restraints of legacy technology and the need to keep up with the demands of the increasingly digitally savvy customer base. Approaching the challenge from a ‘legacy startup’ perspective, the Gulf Air team identified the need to experiment, create personalized offers and distribute them in the modern airline retailing landscape as essential to realizing the airline’s strategy.
The Gulf Air team rallied around the NDC distribution framework to move from simply selling tickets to offering customers more value by becoming an airline retailer.
To address the challenge, Gulf Air chose to partner with TPConnects, a leading provider of cloud-based travel technology solutions. This partnership was a strategic move to enable the airline’s transformation journey and provide the technology solutions required to become a modern airline retailer.
Solution
From ticket selling to modern airline retailing
TPConnects’ next-generation airline retailing platform, Astra, leverages a standardized, modular design to ensure scalability, adaptability, and, ultimately more choice. The solution enables Gulf Air to leverage a more dynamic retailing environment that better aligns with its ambitions. Want to know how? Download the case study.
Results
Gulf Air’s success in modern airline retailing
The solution puts the customer on the center stage of Gulf Air’s boutique business strategy, regardless of which channel they want to shop and provides solid foundations to advance its retailing aspirations. For more on this, download the case study.
TPConnects is a top 5 NDC API provider according to T2RL’s* 2022 numbers for “NDC API – Now using API passenger traffic” with close to 1.2 Mn passengers. We have had growth in 2023 and with Gulf Air, we will continue to see an increase in numbers with the onboarding of partner agencies.
*T2RL, Travel Technology Research Ltd, independent research and consulting company