Former Orbitz CEO Pushes a Connected Journey Through Data Partnerships

25.08.2023 - 13:51 / skift.com / Justin Dawes

Travel companies have been trying to knit together the fragmented pieces of the customer journey for years. 

The goal has been for seamless communication of valuable customer data between companies — flight, hotel, ground transportation, restaurants, event vendors, and more — for upselling, better service, and so the traveler can easily manage all aspects of a trip through one system.

Jeff Katz says his software startup, Journera, has developed a tool over the last several years to help companies get closer to that goal. That startup is now selling use of that platform, called TripSignals, to existing and new customers. Journera offered some data sharing services before, but this is the iteration of the product that Katz has been working toward, he said.

Katz has understood the need for this type of connectivity for years as he was formerly the president of Sabre, founding CEO of Orbitz, and CEO of Swissair.

“All of the data comes from very disparate systems, so you have to bring them together,” Katz said. “Amadeus is an investor in our company; they’re a magnificent company, so is Sabre and so forth. But nobody sees all the data, not Google, not Sabre, not a particular brand, not an [online travel agency], nobody sees it all. So if you care about this, you have to think of an ecosystem that allows it to come together.” 

As long as “explicit permission” — he emphasized that point — is granted by all parties, many types of detailed, real-time customer data can flow from one company to another through the platform, Katz said. That could be the basis for a number of revenue-driving uses. 

“There’s processes that happen when you’re on the journey that I think are untapped,” he said. 

“We’re talking about the next stage of what could partnerships do. You could really deepen offers, you could deepen services.”

He highlighted that the platform could allow a hotel to see that a customer’s plane has landed, and then authenticate that guest and provide a digital room key in the same app that was used for the boarding pass. 

“You cannot do that without the TripSignals,” he said. 

Or, an airline could see when someone checks out of a hotel and use that as a signal to send an offer for a seat upgrade. Or a ground transport company could see when the customer is deboarding a plane, and if that plane is early or late, and then offer a taxi. Companies could also exchange restaurant or event reservation information, and they could make special offers based on loyalty levels or something else. 

Big travel companies, including Booking Holdings, that have access to huge amounts of travel data talk regularly about the importance of this connected trip concept and their efforts toward realizing it. Though it has been an