Marcus Eklund, Global Managing Director, FCM Travel Solutions.
FCM Travel Solutions is one of the first global travel management companies to give customers in Europe access to Lufthansa Group airlines’ Continuous Pricing via the TMC’s proprietary or preferred online booking tools, including Concur Travel.
The development is another major milestone in FCM’s drive to spearhead industry collaboration between technology providers and airlines in developing solutions to book and service NDC content. Despite the impact of Covid-19 on the business travel sector this year, FCM has continued to invest in advancing its NDC offering to ensure the TMC can provide the widest choice of air content and fare comparisons to clients when they resume travel, as well as to those clients who continued making bookings.
Lufthansa Group airlines launched the new airline pricing, part of its NDC Smart Offers, last month enabling its airlines (Austrian Airlines, Lufthansa, SWISS and Brussels Airlines) to set fares at an almost unlimited number of price points on most European routes. Traditional GDS pricing only allows airlines to use 26 price points, which can lead to unnecessarily high jumps between fares.
FCM’s global distribution team has worked in close collaboration with the TMC’s OBT providers and customers to test functionality and servicing in order to ensure the best possible end-to-end booking experience. The option for online booking of Lufthansa Group airlines’ Continuous Pricing complements FCM’s ability to book and service the airline group’s NDC content offline for customers since early 2019 via the TMC’s preferred aggregator in each European market. This includes TPConnects in which FCM’s parent company Flight Centre Travel Group secured a strategic 22.47% stake in March of this year.
In a phased roll-out, the first European market to go live with online booking of Lufthansa Group airlines’ Continuous Pricing is FCM Germany, where large multi-national clients will have access to this content via Concur Travel and other preferred OBTs from mid-November. The Lufthansa Group airlines’ NDC Smart Offers will also be bookable via FCM’s proprietary online booking tool ‘Arrivon’ in Germany which is designed specifically to meet the needs of SME clients in this market. In the UK, FCM customers will benefit from Lufthansa Group airlines Continuous Pricing via their preferred OBT by the end of November. Other European markets where FCM has equity-owned operations including Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland will be able to provide continuous fares via their OBT by the end of this year.
Marcus Eklund, Global Managing Director, FCM commented: “We are extremely pleased to be among the first TMCs to give our customers seamless access to Lufthansa’s continuous pricing offering which they can book online via an OBT or ask our consultants to book offline via our preferred aggregators. As one of the largest global TMCs, we have aimed to be at the forefront of working collaboratively with our airline and technology partners for the last two years to embrace NDC and ensure our customers have access to the widest choice of fares and content. This focus hasn’t changed in 2020 despite the seismic shift in business travel caused by Covid-19. If anything, effective NDC booking solutions are going to be even more important to airlines and TMCs in the post pandemic environment as customers are looking for greater price parity, as well as increased support with flight disruption and traveller safety. However, our customer centric content strategy has always been to work with airline partners whose NDC offering is truly beneficial. As a result, we will never roll out NDC solutions that do not enhance the customer experience.”
“We are excited to further expand our NDC partnership with FCM through the introduction of Continuous Pricing,” says Stefan Kreuzpaintner, Vice President Sales Europe, Middle East and Africa Lufthansa Group Network Airlines. “Jointly we aim at providing our customers access to the most attractive NDC Smart Offers and enhance the end-to-end experience of our product innovations for all partners in the value chain. This way, Lufthansa Group airlines and FCM will create tangible value and pave the way towards modern airline retailing.”
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