Aer Lingus, Ireland’s national carrier, continues to improve the efficiency of its online booking site, AerLingus.com, and reduce costs, in partnership with leading Irish technology supplier, Datalex, which recently won the Leading Internet Booking Engine Technology Provider award at the 10th Annual World Travel Awards.
In restructuring its business, one of the main savings for the carrier in recent months has been in the area of distribution costs, mainly through the success of its AerLingus.com site.  This is being accomplished through a series of technology initiatives, which help to significantly reduce the cost of transactions through the online booking engine, generating significant savings. 

The AerLingus.com site is based on the Datalex BookIt! Consumerä Internet booking platform which enables AerLingus.com customers to browse and book available fares for up to six passengers and also incorporates a 7-day cheapest fare search.  A fully integrated fares database and pricing engine, BookIt! Faresä, enables Aer Lingus to retain more centralized control of the creation, maintenance and distribution of its fares.

“We are continually advancing our technology solutions to make business processes more efficient and enable airlines to have more effective management of yield,” said Aidan Brogan, Senior Vice President, Global Sales and Marketing, Datalex.  “Datalex has a long association with Aer Lingus and this particular project has enabled us to develop a totally flexible fares model providing alternative lower cost options which can be customized to target specific areas in the distribution chain.”

The key benefit of the Datalex fares solution is that it enables airlines to offer valid and available flight options which have already been priced, while reducing the number and cost of transactions on third- party hosts.  A built-in tax cache also reduces the number of hits to third-party hosts for tax information and lowers response times for fare requests.  Using the Datalex e-Commerce platform, fares can be distributed to dispersed sales channels including call centers, travel agents, corporate intranets, staff travel, Web sites and alliances.

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