AWS Travel and Hospitality Partner Conversations: Datalex

Sean Corkery, Chief Executive Officer at Datalex, joins Judy Pitchford, WW Head, Travel for AWS Travel and Hospitality, for a broad-ranging discussion around how AWS Partners are helping customers build resilience and prepare for what’s next in travel and hospitality. During this unprecedented time for the industry, we have been inspired by the innovations that have been born out of disruption and will impact and improve the way we fly, eat, stay, and experience our world for years to come.

Now more than ever, AWS wants to help customers succeed by connecting them to AWS Partners with deep AWS technical expertise and proven customer success to help travel and hospitality organizations build a resilient business and accelerate innovation. That’s why we’re honored to have Datalex as a launch member of the brand-new AWS Travel and Hospitality Partner Competency.

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Judy Pitchford: Describe your company, the types of travel and hospitality work you do, and key travel and hospitality clients.

Sean Corkery: Datalex has been around for more than 30 years and has been a consistent innovator in travel and airline technology, particularly in the world of airline retail. The Datalex Digital Commerce Platform, with more than 800 offer and order management retailing capabilities, puts power in the hands of the airline to drive revenue and profit as digital retailers. We are about self-service Offer Control, so airlines can adapt and innovate at a faster pace.

Our core products are multichannel and extend the range and scale of revenue-generating products and services airlines can offer to passengers throughout the end-to-end travel lifecycle. These products – Datalex Direct, Datalex Merchandiser, Datalex NDC and Datalex Dynamic – are designed to operate at scale and can be used individually or together.

Datalex is a global enterprise; our customers include Air China, JetBlue Airways, Hainan Group, SAS, Philippine Airlines, Aer Lingus, Brussels Airlines, Air Transat and Trailfinders. This global reach gives us unique insights into the needs of airlines across the world, and an ability to service their specific regional needs.

JP: Many companies across travel and hospitality have been managing through a period of unprecedented disruption. What have been the biggest challenges you’ve faced during this recent period and how have you helped clients managed through them?

SC: Like all companies that serve the airline industry, we are impacted by the curtailment in travel and the associated effect on our airline customers. We took immediate action ourselves – a targeted restructuring programme, re-negotiating business partner arrangements and an elimination of discretionary spending. Fortunately, we have been able to stick to our committed 2020 guidance – in fact, we just raised it somewhat – a good outcome in a challenging year.

Since the start of COVID-19, we have supported our customers with important solutions to meet their needs during these turbulent and challenging months. We helped JetBlue implement the first flight change-fee waiver in the United States – a task we completed together with JetBlue at record speed. We have worked with a number of other customers to implement important updates in areas such as cancellations, refunds, and tax policies.

As we emerge from COVID-19, we’ve been listening to and working closely with our customers to ensure we are supporting them and meeting their needs as they reset, recover, and plan for the future. Most recently, we delivered a streamlined, self-service online voucher redemption capability to our customer, Air Transat. Travelers can now use their vouchers in combination with other forms of payment, reducing the pressure on the airline’s call centre and with the high level of pick up, seems to be very well appreciated by customers.

Airport interior travel

JP: It’s been an incredibly difficult time for travel and hospitality companies, but we’ve seen many companies investing for the long run. With all the uncertainty, why has your company chosen to invest in travel and hospitality at this time?

SC: Travel tech is Datalex’s DNA. Datalex has a long-term vision and plan to enable airlines to excel in digital retailing – where airlines can really make a difference to their customers, and to their bottom line. We have invested over $100 million in our platform during the lifetime of the company and we will continue to invest in a product-led, cloud-enabled strategy. We have a deep heritage in providing technology to the airline industry and we believe our expertise in and vision for digital retailing is more valuable than ever before in order to position airlines for the future of digital retailing excellence.

JP: In the face of the current disruption to the travel and hospitality industry, we’ve observed incredible innovations coming from across the industry. How has your company innovated through these challenging times on behalf of your customers and what are you most proud of?

SC: Earlier in this interview I mentioned some of the ways we have supported our customers during these times, largely through agile and creative adaption of our technical capabilities. Simultaneously, we have focused on two specific areas which we believe will be game-changing for our customers, present and future:

Firstly, our new Digital Configurator tool is a game-changer in offer control, transforming how our customers can manage business rule data via sophisticated self-service. It empowers business users with real-time retail control to make nanosecond configuration changes without IT support, enabling unrivalled speed to market and significant cost savings. Our customers can now react faster than ever before with tactical products and pricing in market, in response to customer demands, competition and other changing market factors. Without doubt, engagement with travellers is to become increasingly real-time and likewise airlines need to be supported by products that enable them to react to market and customer demands in real time.

Secondly, the unprecedented disruption to travel by COVID-19 has brought many changes, including how and what airlines merchandise. It’s increasingly about merchandising with meaningful, value-add customer interactions that extend far beyond the customer’s flight, that engages them and meets their needs pre-, during and post-journey and in fact can extend to non-travel related products as well as travel specific products. Datalex Merchandiser is differentiated by its flexibility, personalisation capabilities, and extensive product catalogue. It has a fast implementation time of six weeks (for entry product level) ensuring low implementation cost and speed to market.

JP: The travel and hospitality industry is incredibly resilient. As you look toward recovery, what role does technology play for your company moving forward? How do you see technology enhancing the customer experience and improving operational efficiency?

SC: As tech partners, Datalex is in a privileged position to shape and support the recovery and ensure airlines are strongly positioned for a future that removes retail friction and drives deeper customer engagement. Technology and data are at the heart of recovery

There are some areas we cannot control such as border openings, vaccines, or green list alignment. Where we do have control is the customer retail journey pre-, during, and post-flight where we can:

- - - - Reassure customers to book with confidence by offering products that keep them safe and ease their journey – merchandising what matters, when it matters for a deeper customer bond and a deeper wallet share.
        
        Put control in the hands of airlines with powerful self-service tools that enable them to create and adapt offers at speed.
        
        Enable as much of the customer journey online with less friction and fewer touchpoints.
        
        Offer airlines a true omnichannel technology to provide a seamless experience as travellers move from one to channel to another.
        
        Continue to innovate in digital retailing to support our customers on their path to becoming leading, customer-centric retailers.

Importantly, we recognise that not all countries are recovering at the same pace, and therefore it is essential to be able to solve for a variety of needs – for example, China domestic (recovering very fast) versus intra Europe (less so).

JP: How does building on AWS allow you to prepare for whatever the “new normal” in travel and hospitality will look like? How does the new AWS Travel and Hospitality Partner Competency help companies do the same?

SC: We see our relationship with AWS as an important element of our growth strategy and are delighted to be one of the launch Partners in the new AWS Travel and Hospitality Partner Competency programme.

AWS allows for the right sizing of resources required to support a customer solution at all times, while allowing for rapid scaling to meet future upswing in demand. Off the shelf services offered by AWS, such as machine learning, enable rapid prototyping and accelerated product innovation with improved time to market.

Our APIs allow our airline customers the ability to build real-time integrations to the airline offer-and-order management systems and to develop their own user interfaces for web, call center, mobile and kiosk points of sale. We use Amazon API Gateway Usage Plans to specify who can access Datalex REST and NDC offer-and-order web service APIs. The service also enables Datalex to manage how much and how fast subscribers can use them. These features are particularly important to OTAs, metasearch engines, and fare insight partners.

So, with AWS as the foundational strategic enabler, Datalex can accelerate its digital strategy, deliver faster on our roadmap, and deliver better value to our customers.

JP: What makes you excited for the future of travel and hospitality? As a traveler or guest, where are you looking forward to visiting next?

SE: This is a seminal moment in time for our industry. Airlines will leverage technology as part of their recovery and the pandemic will prove to have been a catalyst for major and positive change. Change is the only choice, and this excites me for the future of travel and hospitality.

Professionally, I cannot wait to fly again. I have spent a lot of my career travelling the globe meeting with customers and can’t wait for the day I land in New York, to enjoy a face-to-face catch up with JetBlue, or Beijing, to spend time with our Chinese clients. Personally, I like to spend time in Spain with my family and touchdown in Malaga cannot come soon enough. As we hear the latest news around vaccines, it is all starting to feel a bit closer than it did even a few weeks ago.

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Sean was appointed as Non-Executive Director and Interim Chief Executive Officer of Datalex in April 2019 and was subsequently appointed as the permanent CEO in October 2019. He also served as Acting Chairman between June and November 2019. Sean is a highly experienced executive having held multiple senior positions in the technology industry including; Senior Vice President of Global Operations at Dell Inc; COO at Esat Telecom; Vice President of Global Operations at AST / Samsung and Director of Pacific Operations at Apple Inc. Prior to joining Datalex, Sean was Chairman and CEO at Actavo and he is a non-executive director of a number of private companies