Routehappy by ATPCO has built three rich content hubs for airlines, demonstrating that it has shifted focus from putting together airline content itself to enabling airlines to supply their own, CEO Robert Albert said.
One new hub is for amenities, one for "universal ticket attributes" for fare restrictions and benefits like priority boarding, and one for "universal product attributes," which include videos, photos and other marketing content for airlines' products. While Routehappy already had built hubs for both the UTAs and UPAs, it had gathered that data itself. That data still will be available to distributors and sales channels via Routehappy's application programming interfaces. The new hubs will give airlines more control and the ability to provide even richer content.
For example, an airline could specify not just "snacks" but that Starbucks coffee and biscotti are available on a flight, or United could specify its Polaris class rather than a generic first or business class description, he said. With UTAs, Delta could specify SkyPriority status rather than the more generic "priority" descriptor.
All three hubs are connected in a common cloud environment, so airlines can see all their content in a single interface. The new hubs come eight months after airfare publishing firm ATPCO acquired Routehappy.
"This has turned Routehappy from a company focused on content to a company focused on solutions," Albert said. "It's a huge sea change and shift from what we've been doing, and this is the beginning of Routehappy as a serious enterprise software company."
Routehappy also has begun offering its own content specialists to help airlines develop merchandising content. Its agents, for instance, could help an airline set up a photo shoot for its product or do consumer testing to see what content would produce the best results, Albert said.