The German scheduled and executive charter airline, Hahn Air, celebrates the 20th anniversary of its ticketing business which was launched in 1999. The leading provider of ticketing and distribution solutions for other airlines and travel agencies will honour this milestone in its company history throughout the year with various activities. This includes seven international travel agency events, sponsorships of leading industry events and special competitions for travel agents.
“Our ticketing business has certainly come a long way”, says Nico Gormsen, co-founder, co-owner and General Manager of Hahn Air. “In 1999 we saw a business opportunity: many airlines were eager to sell tickets outside of their key markets through travel agencies but could not shoulder the costs of participating in the settlement systems that exist in almost every market, so-called BSPs. Over the years, Hahn Air joined almost all BSPs and established connections with all major GDSs that are used by travel agents to book and issue tickets. This infrastructure enables other airlines to sell their flights on Hahn Air’s HR-169 ticket.”
Quynh Nguyen Ngoc, a travel agent from Hanoi in Vietnam describes the Hahn Air services for travel agents as follows: “Vietnam is one of the smaller markets in the world where not all the airlines join the BSP. It makes us travel agents have many difficulties when booking or issuing tickets of regional and local airlines that are unavailable in Vietnam. But then, the HR-169 ticket came along and has successfully worked! Now we can issue hundreds of airlines worldwide easily and quickly, which also means that our passengers have more and better choices of airlines and routes. For us, that means satisfied customers and more tickets sold.”
Today, Hahn Air has over 350 air, rail and shuttle partners and reaches more than 100,000 travel agencies in 190 markets. With its services, Hahn Air creates business opportunities for all parties involved, as Nico Gormsen explains: “The airline gains more passengers and incremental business in additional markets, the travel agents can sell tickets of more carriers and the customers benefit from greater choices of airlines and destinations.”
“For the future, our main ambition is to continue to provide leading services and solutions to our transportation and travel agency partners”, continues Gormsen. “We are especially looking, for example, to expand our offer of interline EMDs which enable our partners to sell additional travel-related services and thus increase their revenue. Moreover, we are working on solutions to support NDC interline scenarios soon. And finally, we are continuously forging partnerships with additional airlines to expand our portfolio of partners.”
