Against the backdrop of an ever-evolving, modern retailing landscape, it’s no surprise that today’s travelers expect more. With unforeseeable booking patterns and operational headwinds adding to that pressure, optimizing revenue can feel like an uphill battle. These factors present formidable challenges that demand strategic solutions.

To maintain a competitive edge, airlines must embark on a profound reevaluation of the travel retailing experience and begin viewing their products and services through a customer-centric lens.

Airline executives and other travel professionals across the ecosystem are asking the following questions as they look for ways to apply this lens, evolve beyond traditional product models, and sell a wider variety of travel-related products and services:

• How do we cope with fluctuating booking patterns, which make it difficult to generate accurate forecasts and can result in underutilized capacity or overbooked flights?
• How does the new distribution capability (NDC) format deliver more targeted airline products and services?
• How can we better service and support the needs of different types of travelers and create new cross-sell and upsell opportunities for travel agencies?
• What aspects of transition readiness should my company prioritize from a technological and organizational perspective?

In this three-article report, Skift and Sabre teamed up to answer these questions and explore how travel companies can deliver the personalized shopping and booking experiences their customers have grown to expect.

1. Introduction
2. Sabre’s Mike Reyes on Navigating the Future of Airline Retailing
3. A New Era of Airline Retailing: Inside Sabre’s Busy NDC Launch Schedule
4. Why the Future of Airline Retailing Is Open