The firms worked together to develop technology that Advito’s consultants can use with other tools to provide new savings opportunities to travel managers. The tool measures pricing trends and booking class availability. The ability to compare current and future pricing while negotiating with airlines is backed by real-time, global intelligence. The intelligence helps companies understand prospective fare availability, often for the first time for most corporations, which creates a level playing field for airlines and corporate buyers. Airfare Predictor

“Our goal is to create more transparency in airlines’ pricing practices, which impacts corporate customers,” said Olivier Benoit, Advito’s senior director and global air practice leader. “We can now answer questions that people outside of airline revenue management teams could not answer before.”

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The proprietary process and analytics collect airlines’ prices (airfares) 180 days into the future, mimicking a range of real consumer booking behavior. The data goes beyond a single airfare, breaking it down by four components to highlight why fares are changing. Specifics include the fare basis, airline surcharges, taxes and booking class availability.

Air Cube’s chief sales & marketing officer, Olivier Bressard, said, “Our business intelligence expertise and our capacity to collect airfare data through our strategic partner INFARE allowed us to build the visual analytics solution that Advito had been looking for.”

To give an example of how it works, Advito may change a negotiation strategy and yield higher savings when an airline is offering a discount on airfare that is only available 20 percent of the time. Airfare Predictor makes it clear that the proposed discount wouldn’t realize significant savings and Advito would request better terms from the airline.

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In another scenario, a travel manager working with an Advito consultant may learn that booking a flight segment nine days in advance yields the lowest fare. Airfare Predictor data can better influence a traveler to book a flight at the optimum time for considerable savings.

Airfare Predictor supports Advito’s holistic, ongoing approach to travel program performance management and will be integrated with the company’s Dynamic Performance Management™ and Traveler Engagement™ services.

“Advito clients who participated in the BETA tests said this is a game changer because until now, nobody knew how to use this information to their benefit,” Benoit said. Airfare Predictor

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