OpenJaw Technologies, a leading online technology partner of the world’s biggest travel brands and TravelSky Technology Limited, the leading provider of information technology solutions for China’s air travel and tourism industries, today announced a strategic partnership to bring t-Retailing to China. As a result, the OpenJaw t-Retail Platform will be available to China’s 30 domestic airlines who will benefit from best-of-breed flight shopping capabilities and the retailing of a full range of ancillaries, which leads to increased revenues and deeper customer relationships. In addition, the airlines will be afforded greater and more direct control of their business models and product offerings, enabling them to quickly and more easily differentiate themselves in their own market environment. The landmark alliance signals OpenJaw’s entry into the East Asia region.

China’s airlines will be able to deliver seamless shopping of flights, hotel, car rental and destination activities on the airline’s own website. By meeting customers’ end-to-end travel needs without losing them to third-party websites, the airlines will ultimately benefit from greater ownership of their customers’ travel experience and valuable booking data, leading to further insights and opportunities to better serve their customers.

Access to the t-Retail Platform’s Flight Booking Engine will enable the airlines to implement the latest online flight selling techniques. The t-Retail Platform uses proven retailing strategies to increase conversion and revenue, including:

• Upsell, such as upsell of Flight Cabin (e.g. from economy to premium economy) or upsell of Fare Families (e.g. from a non-refundable ticket to a fully flexible ticket)

• Dynamic packaging of flights and ancillaries into personalised package deals

• Switch-sell techniques that encourage customers to switch from a single product (e.g. return flight) to a more lucrative package deal (e.g. flight + hotel + tour)

Another strategic advantage afforded by the t-Retail Platform is the ability for the airlines to directly control their business models and product offerings. Chinese airlines will now be able to make critical changes such as amendments to pricing, inventory availability, content, booking flow and user experience directly. This greatly improves business response times and enables the airlines to create and defend a differentiated position.

“It is widely acknowledged that the potential in online travel retailing in China is significant. The t-Retail Platform gives TravelSky customers a significant advantage to maximise the commercial opportunity presented by this predicted growth. It enables them to deliver the best user experiences to their customers, while accessing some of the most potent retailing techniques for conversion.  Importantly it also enables them the agility to operate successful online travel services in the fast paced Internet environment. We look forward to helping grow this opportunity alongside our TravelSky Technology partners,” said Kieron Branagan, CEO OpenJaw.

Currently USD$11 billion of travel is booked online in China but by 2016 the value of online travel sales in China is predicted to reach USD$48 billion per annum.

OpenJaw makes this announcement in the lead up to the OpenJaw t-Retailing Summit thought-leadership event, which is to take place on 30 May 2013. The event will see 100 travel industry executives from around the world gather in Dublin, Ireland to explore how travel companies can excel at retailing travel products online.

www.openjawtech.com