As airlines seek to reclaim profits and acquire new customers, they must face complex relationships with OTAs and metasearch engines. In this position paper, we consider how performance marketing, search-engine optimization, and renewed attention to content can drive direct-channel conversions — sparing airlines steep third-party commissions and fees while growing loyalty and market share among new and existing segments of their consumer base.

1. Airlines and Direct-Channel Booking:
EveryMundo + Skift Present:
special
report
As airlines seek to reclaim profits and acquire new
customers, they must face complex relationships with
OTAs and metasearch engines. In this position paper, we
consider how performance marketing, search-engine
optimization, and renewed attention to content can drive
direct-channel conversions — sparing airlines steep
third-party commissions and fees while growing loyalty
and market share among new and existing segments of
their consumer base.
skift.com everymundo.com
If you have any questions about the report
please contact trends@skift.com.
Skift Team + EveryMundo
Cutting Out the Middleman

3. Airlines and Direct-Channel Booking: Cutting Out the Middleman SKIFT REPORT 2015
3
About Us
EveryMundo: Performance Marketing Solutions
EveryMundo empowers airlines to drive conversions in the direct channel and own
their customers. Leveraging the EveryMundo Solution Suite, airlines can rapidly
deploy performance landing pages for every route, leverage dynamic fare and flight
information, access real-time business intelligence, and efficiently run multi-chan-
nel performance marketing campaigns at scale. EveryMundo provides the expertise
and support to enable airlines to deploy infrastructure and optimize performance
marketing efforts.
• airTRFX® provides the performance online infrastructure airlines need to im-
prove conversion in the direct channel, outcompete the OTAs in search, and own
their customers: a page for every destination and route, in every language and
every country.
• FareNet™ allows an airline to capture valuable fare and flight information in real
time for performance marketing and business intelligence – without affecting
page performance or additional calls to the GDS.
• FareWire™ empowers airlines to leverage FareNet™ to deploy dynamic, per-
formance content modules, such as a low fare calendar, outside of airTRFX® or
even on third-party/affiliate sites.
• KWDS® scalably generates perfectly structured SEM campaigns for airlines,
comprising millions of keywords and thousands of SEM ads covering every
conceivable combination of your routes and destinations in every language your
customers speak.
• EveryMundo eCommerce Services comprise assessments, strategic planning,
and full-blown execution of multi-lingual SEM campaigns, SEO strategies, ana-
lytics implementation/repair/enhancement, multichannel attribution modeling,
conversion optimization strategies, and tag management services.
EveryMundo will empower you to take back the direct channel, drive revenue and
own your customers.
For more information, visit everymundo.com or call us at +1 305.375.0045

4. Airlines and Direct-Channel Booking: Cutting Out the Middleman SKIFT REPORT 2015
4
Executive Summary
Airlines are leaving revenue on the table when it comes to attracting new and loyal custom-
ers, especially in the context of their relationships with online travel agencies and metase-
arch engines.
The dual nature of the relationship that airlines share with online travel agencies and metase-
arch engines stands to divert ‘non-brand-loyal’ buyers. That is, OTAs’ and metasearch en-
gines’ flight-comparison functionality promotes on-site decisions at those outlets, deflecting
consumers from direct-channel interactions and preventing airlines from fully tapping the
consumer segment for a future loyal customer base.
While airlines are not likely to give up the benefits they enjoy from third-party booking
outlets, they stand to capture more revenue, acquire more customers (and then retain them),
and minimize margin-decreasing commissions and fees (some $132 billion, in 2014, by re-
cent estimates) by strengthening their online site architecture and search-engine best prac-
tices compliance.
Key to increasing direct-channel customer loyalty and conversions are performance-market-
ing strategies, search-engine optimization, and other approaches that reach and retain airline
customers throughout both the search and post-intent phase of their trip planning. Airlines
need to identify where flight searches begin, for travelers, and how paid and organic search
impact the process. By tapping the 60%–70% of consumers that respond to organic search
results, and the 20%–30% that click on paid placements, case studies suggest conversion rate
increases occur, though their exact percentage can vary widely.
Airline leadership describes the avenues to these results as consisting of several components.
One is a balanced partnership with OTAs and metasearch that emphasizes lower com-
missions and fees. Another is to reach consumers with the deeper access to inventory that
direct-channel can offer.
Optimizing on-site content for search impacts this effort considerably. Structural, technical
and organizational elements communicate relevance to search engines, which improves
rankings thereby driving traffic. Responsive design and conversion-oriented content drives
conversion. The combination of these things – direct acquisition and a positive, fully-branded
purchase experience – contribute to creating loyalty and a long-term relationship.
In this position paper, airline and performance marketing leaders look at the factors that can
turn the direct-channel into a one-stop, every-time resource for travelers in pursuit of their
next ticket purchase — airlines can actively seek not only new traffic and conversions, but
also repeat and loyal customers.

5. Airlines and Direct-Channel Booking: Cutting Out the Middleman SKIFT REPORT 2015
5
About Skift
Skift is a travel intelli-
gence company that
offers news, data, and
services to professionals
in travel and professional
travelers, to help them
make smart decisions
about travel.
Skift is the business
of travel.
Visit skift.com for more.
Executive Summary 4
Introduction: direct-channel and airlines 6
A brief history of airline booking technology
The impact of competitor/partner relationships 7
Seeking a better balance, optimizing search 7
Customer acquisition and airlines:
search and the ‘non-brand-loyal’ consumer 9
Where flight searches begin 10
Airlines and search engine results 11
Winning direct-channel customers: search, loyalty,
and revisiting approaches to content 13
Reaching non-brand-loyal customers via search 14
Modeling direct-channel/third-party balance 15
Communicating the value of direct channel 16
Airline website content: dynamic content and
other considerations 17
Insights and strategies 18
Endnotes 19
EveryMundo empowers airlines to acquire customers
and drive revenue through their direct channel 20
About Skift 21
Table of contents

6. What Millennials Want in Meetings SKIFT REPORT 2015
6
Introduction: Direct-channel and airlines
Airlines and Direct-Channel Booking: Cutting Out the Middleman SKIFT REPORT 2015
Online travel agencies (OTAs) occupy at least two key roles in the airline eco-
system: they are partners, and they are competitors.
They are partners in all the ways that OTAs supply transaction-based ser-
vices — ones that eventually lead to airline revenue (but not always in optimal
ways). They constitute a network of partnerships that, whatever consider-
ations of commissions and fees may be the case, airlines cannot ignore.
They are also competitors, however, particularly in the realm of customer
acquisition and retention. OTAs and metasearch engines threaten to divert
conversion-ready travelers away from airlines’ websites, where
direct-channel bookings provide a more ideal conduit to revenue, one with-
out most, if not all, of the third-party fees and commissions that negatively
affect profits.
How this dual dynamic — partner and competitor — has come to be is very
much intertwined with the story of online travel planning. It is rooted in the
intersection of technology and commerce and it is critical to the consideration
of how airlines can better capture customers.