Biztribution

Next-generation fully decentralised travel and tourism distribution

The air travel distribution (booking and selling of airline tickets and related products to customers) is dominated by 4 Global Distribution System (GDS) companies. GDSs pose a great pressure on airlines profitability: They charge €7.500 million yearly to the sector. In addition, they control over 55% of the air travel distribution and act as an oligopoly, threatening market competition. They control services such as interlining, extra luggage, seat selection and catering, and limit innovation and new markets creation. Indeed, Amadeus is investigated1 in the EU and Sabre sued in the USA2 and UK3 for the breach of antitrust rules. Airlines need to cut down distribution costs and regain control over services and customers to offer better personalised services and cross- and up-selling. Although airlines have tried to avoid GDSs through direct sales channels, they have a great overhead to develop and maintain their own IT solutions in terms of workforce needed, IT resources and time. On the other hand, travel agencies need to provide tailor-made trips to their customers, involving different airlines. Biztribution (see 2 minutes video4) is a deep tech game changer aiming at disrupting the current airline distribution market. It is a blockchain-based fully decentralised distribution model for the air travel industry. We reinvent air distribution by avoiding overheads and intermediary costs and allowing more efficient operations in a collaborative, neutral, ecosystem shared approach. According to the EU commissioner for Competition, ticket distribution costs are artificially high due to the GDS oligopoly, ultimately raising ticket prices for travellers1. With biztribution, we reduce the total distribution costs by 40%.