How Struggling Air India Is Setting the Stage for a Major Battle Among Distribution Giants

The battle for India’s lucrative travel market among global distribution systems is not over yet — even if Travelport has won hands down with exclusive rights to distribute Air India’s domestic flights content in India. For a split second, it appears that Travelport can sit pretty and command control of a vast market all on its own. Sabre announced at the start of the year that Air India had decided to withdraw from it. Amadeus had pulled out in December 2018 after Travelport's win, awarded in October 2018 and fully implemented by January 1, 2020, which was just too much for it to swallow. So the grass was looking green for Travelport with neither Sabre nor Amadeus on the turf. But Amadeus announced last week that it's back in with Air India, even if it’s only with the airline’s international flights content, not domestic, which is now fully ensconced in Travelport. And while Sabre has failed to renew its contract, which expired at the end of 2019, the company said it is still engaging with Air India on a new agreement. India is far too important for technology and distribution players to walk away. And the distribution weapon that Air India wields is symptomatic of a sick airline that oscillates between cost-cutting and generating revenue as it gasps for air to stay afloat, according to industry veterans interviewed by Skift. A Dubious First Air India made a dubious first in the annals of airline distribution by appointing Travelport the sole distributor of its domestic flights content in India in October 2018. This is significant. Firstly, the domestic market in Asia is where most of the traffic is for airlines, except for the few like Singapore Airlines that have a tiny home base. Not only that, India’s domestic travel market is consistently the fastest growing of key markets tracked by the International Air Transport Association. In 2018, it expanded 18.5 percent over 2017 to 116 million passenger journeys. Secondly, such a pact just isn’t done. For decades, Amadeus, Sabre, and Travelport have taken assertive stands in their contracts with airlines and have seldom, if ever, let a large airline do what Air India has done — provide less-than-full content. But Travelport is desperate to reverse its market share losses and sees India as a means to this end, as Skift's technology editor Sean O’Neill wrote in this article. Air India, on the other hand, is under heavy pressure to show it is either making revenue, or maki