By Lucila Rodaro, Managing Consultant, Multimodal
Negotiating airfares for your corporate travel program can feel like stepping into the unknown.
Prices fluctuate with little predictability, making it difficult to anticipate future fare availability and secure the best deals. Fortunately, greater transparency is possible with Advito’s advanced analytics solution: the Airfare Predictor.
Inside the Airfare Predictor: Edifact and NDC fares
If airfare prices are constantly fluctuating, how can you get an accurate pulse on pricing trends? It starts with the right data. Advito collects publicly available airline prices on a daily basis for over 800 routes, which represents more than 35 million transactions per year. This data includes information on airport and other taxes as well as fuel surcharges, providing full transparency on the total cost of each flight. Plus, we collect both NDC and EDIFACT data, ensuring a more comprehensive and up-to-date view of airline pricing across all distribution channels.
With all this data in one place, the Airfare Predictor uses predictive analysis to shop airfares four months into the future. The predictor’s shopping behavior mimics the business traveler—searching by day of the week and length of stay—making the data relevant to travel managers.
The Airfare Predictor leverages a robust set of filters to refine analyses by airline, fare type (NDC, EDIFACT), time period, booking class, carrier, price, route, and more, allowing our consultants to provide valuable insights on a highly targeted view of market dynamics.
For example, the Airfare Predictor enables our air experts to objectively assess the true value of incorporating NDC fares into your corporate program. By comparing the lowest available NDC and EDIFACT fares on identical round-trip itineraries (excluding Basic fares), it provides clear, data-driven insights to understand the real value of NDC—helping to challenge savings assumptions that may sometimes be overstated by airlines.
The tool enables us to analyze booking class availability across airlines, providing clear visibility into what inventory is available and when. It also generates continuously updated pricing curves, so we can help you anticipate when prices are likely to rise or fall and identify optimal booking windows—ultimately delivering actionable insights and recommendations to optimize your air strategy.
Three benefits for travel managers
Using the Airfare Predictor brings three major benefits to travel managers: transparency on pricing, reduced spend and better information to influence traveler behavior.
1. Improved transparency
Negotiating rates that are actually available to travelers is key to building an effective air strategy. With enhanced transparency powered by the Airfare Predictor, travel managers gain clearer visibility into market dynamics by removing much of the uncertainty typically associated with negotiations. This approach highlights, for instance, when specific booking classes have limited availability, helping avoid time spent pursuing unrealistic discounts on unavailable booking classes. It also supports more informed decision-making by incorporating elements such as taxes and fuel surcharges alongside the base fare to identify the most relevant options.
By transforming complex airfare data into clear, actionable insights, the Airfare Predictor enables more confident and informed sourcing decisions.
2. Reduced spend
Air travel remains the largest cost driver for most corporate travel programs. Leveraging insights derived from the Airfare Predictor helps identify tangible savings opportunities and optimize overall spend.
Visibility into both NDC and EDIFACT fares provides a comprehensive view of pricing across channels, enabling a more objective assessment of where value truly sits. This allows you to make informed decisions on whether additional content sources will deliver real cost saving benefits to your air program.
Through comparison of fare options, the most cost-effective solutions can be identified and translated into clear guidance for travelers. This not only drives sustainable savings, but also reinforces your program’s position in supplier negotiations.
3. Opportunities to influence traveler behavior
To drive meaningful change within your air program there are several traveler engagement strategies that you can use to keep travelers informed based on the insights you gather from the Airfare Predictor. For example, if you identify the most and least expensive days to fly on a particular route, you can steer travelers toward the most affordable option. From integrating targeted messaging directly into your online booking tool to creating multichannel communications campaigns, you can successfully influence their booking decisions to align with your goals.
The bottom line is: with more transparency on airline pricing based on constantly updated data, you’ll be able to run a more cost-effective air travel program. Contact us to learn more about how Advito’s Airfare Predictor can help you drive savings.