An article by Fred Van Toorn, Datalex’s Director Product Strategy, Offers & Orders.

The Offers & Orders train has well and truly left the station in 2024, but what can we expect in 2025? In this blog, Datalex’s Director Product Strategy Offers & Orders, Fred Van Toorn, outlines the prominent offers and orders trends that have defined 2024 and looks ahead to 2025, exploring emerging areas that are set to shape the future landscape.

NDC Adoption is Rapidly Growing

In 2024, we saw NDC adoption gain huge momentum. This rapid growth brought unexpected challenges to airlines as they experienced a surge in data volumes, leading to high cloud hosting costs as traditional GDS costs are being transferred to the airlines’ own Offers & Orders Management System (OOMS). Likewise, airlines have seen a dramatic rise in look-to-book ratios, especially driven by meta-search platforms.

To address these pressures, airlines are likely to explore high-volume shopping engines designed to handle the influx of shopping requests from meta-searchers and possibly other low revenue sellers.

These engines may prioritise volume over precision, offering less accuracy compared to solutions tailored for high revenue sellers and direct channels.  

RFP’s: The Ultimate End State

While RFP’s often make references to 100% Offers & Orders being the ultimate end state for the airline, this vision is rarely included within the scope of these proposals. Instead, airlines are focusing on a solution for the transition stage into 100% Offers & Orders where maintaining business continuity is paramount. To navigate this evolution effectively, a phased approach that promises incremental value delivery with each phase is being adopted.  

Interline Gains Traction with Offers & Orders, But No “Big Bang” Yet..

In 2025, we’re expecting to see the beginning of POC’s when it comes to interlining with Offers & Orders. Most airlines remain cautious and somewhat hesitant to fully embrace this at this early stage, stemming from the complexity of the initiative which involves coordination amongst many parties, such as interline partners and providers of interline partners. However, perhaps the most significant barrier lies in the absence of complete and mature IATA industry standards when it comes to this very topic.  

Modularity of The Offer & Order Ecosystem and Architecture  

Last year, we saw that among other things the work of the IATA Airline Retailing Consortium resulted in the airline industry really embracing modularity, particularly when it comes to having separate modules for Offer Management, Order Management, Product Management, Dynamic Pricing Engines, and so on.

This modular approach gives airlines the flexibility to select the best vendor for each specific module, tailoring solutions to their unique needs.

However, too much granularity in modularity can make it difficult to manage. This trend is evident in recent Request for Proposals (RFP’s), which are now often focusing on standalone modules such as an Offer Engine only or an Order Management System only, leaving the other module as optional or excluded from the RFP entirely. Looking ahead, we’re expecting to see the emergence of standalone RFP’s for Product Management in 2025 and 2026, further reinforcing this modular approach to the Offers & Orders ecosystem.  

This move to a true modular Offers & Orders ecosystem also calls for more industry standards to enable smooth integration of the various modules provided by different IT providers. This puts more pressure on the related IATA working groups to define, design and publish those standards, which is expected to become one of the main challenges for these working groups. 

To conclude and as we step into 2025, the ongoing evolution of Offers & Orders continues to transform the airline industry, presenting both new opportunities and challenges. The rapid adoption of NDC, growing look–to-book ratios, and the rise of modularity in the offer & order ecosystem are driving significant shifts. Airlines are beginning to explore phased approaches to the transition to 100% Offers & Orders, as well as shifting their focus towards high-volume shopping engines to manage data demands. While interline (with Offers & Orders) adoption remains cautious due to the complexities and incomplete standards, real progress is being made with initial POCs expected this year. Modularity is being embraced but there is a need for clearer industry standards to ensure seamless integration of various modules. Moving forward, industry-wide collaboration will be essential to unlock the full potential of Offers & Orders and drive innovation in airline retailing.