The automated change function will be further upgraded to achieve end-to-end automation of flight inquiries, pricing, and ticketing. PKFARE will also continuously observe the evolving post-ticketing needs of partners, refining the product design and user experience of post-ticketing automation to help partners create competitive post-ticketing solutions.
LONDON – PKFARE announced the significant enhancement of its post-ticketing automation features, enabling automatic verification and pricing for refund requests, and automatic verification for change requests. This advanced API now covers nearly 300 airlines, with over 70% of refund requests from a single customer being automatically verified, and the proportion exceeds 50% on the booking portal.
The process of ticket refunds and changes is complex, involving. To address these challenges, PKFARE’s post-ticketing automation API greatly streamlines the ticket refund and change process, reducing operational costs for itself and its partners while improving end-user satisfaction:
- Online automated interaction reduces manual intervention, lowering labor costs
Based on the observation of customers’ real working scenarios, PKFARE has developed an interface highly compatible with its customers’ standard operating process (SOP) for post-ticketing customer service, transforming manual interaction into online automated interaction, reducing the costs associated with manual labor.
- Automatic interpretation of customer rules enhances pricing accuracy and reduces the need for specialized personnel
The average time for manually analyzing airline refund rules and calculating pricing schemes is 6-10 minutes per order. Taking 100 refund requests per day as an example, PKFARE’s post-ticketing automation API helps customers save 600-1000 minutes each day, equivalent to the efforts of 1-2 specialized personnel. Furthermore, the automation of rule interpretation reduces the expenditure of training, typically taking 2-3 months, required for a professional post-ticketing operations person capable of independently interpreting international airline refund rules .
- Expedited refunds and changes enhance user satisfaction
The manual processing for ticket refunds and changes takes long time, with nearly 90% of the time spent waiting for manual verification. After integrating PKFARE’s post-ticketing automation API, the average processing time for each refund request is reduced by 8 hours, significantly improving the user experience.
While there is a clear demand for post-ticketing automation in the airline industry, the majority of B2B ticketing platforms currently lack support for automated post-processing. Existing solutions in the market, including automatic refund/change tools from various GDS (Global Distribution Systems) such as Auto Ticket Change (ATC) and some SaaS (Software as a Service) providers offering airline-specific automatic refund/change solutions, are limited in their ability to seamlessly connect the entire process from “Passenger – Online Travel Agency – Ticket Content Aggregator – Airline.” Additionally, these technical solutions cover a limited number of airlines.
The difficulty in implementing post-ticketing automation lies in the numerous challenges it faces. Firstly, the rules for ticket refunds and changes are diverse, varying across different ticket sources and different scenarios. Secondly, the accuracy of existing rules needs improvement. Thirdly, many rules lack structured descriptions, making it difficult for machines to interpret.
PKFARE’s post-ticketing automation API addresses these challenges primarily in two aspects: covering more airlines and business scenarios, and ensuring higher accuracy in interpreting customer rules. Currently, PKFARE’s post-ticketing automation solution covers nearly 300 airlines. In addition to integrating existing structured rules from GDS, PKFARE supplements the system by building its own rule database, filling gaps in current rules and correcting inaccuracies in GDS descriptions. Furthermore, to enhance rule accuracy, PKFARE structures text rules and utilizes OpenAI for rule interpretation, coupled with a correction process to continuously optimize AI parsing accuracy. Currently, the rule interpretation accuracy has surpassed 90%.
Building on the existing features, PKFARE will continue to supplement and optimize post-ticketing automation functionality to achieve end-to-end automation of post-ticketing processes.
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
