Hong Kong’s home airlines, Cathay Pacific and Cathay Dragon, continue to grow their distribution capabilities by embracing Skyscanner’s direct booking platform.
The new integration means that Cathay Pacific and Cathay Dragon become the first Hong Kong-based carriers to be able to sell tickets directly within Skyscanner, across both web and mobile channels.
The first phase of the roll out is complete and is available to Cathay Pacific and Cathay Dragon customers and Skyscanner users in 40 markets, including Hong Kong, Australia, Canada, Japan, Singapore, the United Kingdom, the United States and Taiwan.
Cathay Pacific director of commercial and cargo, Ronald Lam, said: “We are very pleased to partner with Skyscanner in the development of this new distribution capability in order to provide travellers with an improved and seamless booking experience.
“Cathay Pacific is committed to working with industry partners to widen our distribution coverage and make our award-winning products more accessible to a broader perspective of customers.”
Skyscanner was the first travel meta-search engine with the capacity to display and sell tickets directly through the NDC connection, building this into its direct booking platform.
Skyscanner has since gone on to lead the field when it comes to IATA’s NDC initiative, having been the first aggregator to achieve Level 3 Aggregator status.
Skyscanner’s direct booking platform gives airlines and travel providers a powerful booking channel enabling travellers to research, choose and immediately book itineraries within Skyscanner without having to re-direct to supplier sites.
This results in a quicker, easier and more efficient booking process.
Partners on the platform have reported a 20 per cent uplift on booking conversions on basic tickets, a 50 per cent conversion rate lift on mobile bookings and a 100 per cent uplift in ancillary ticket sales.
Hugh Aitken, senior director of strategic partnerships at Skyscanner, said: “We are delighted that Cathay Pacific is joining an ever-growing number of airlines including British Airways, Scoot and Finnair who are spearheading the next generation of flexible and dynamic travel content distribution through the Skyscanner global marketplace.
“As a traveller-focused business we want to offer our users the unique opportunity to book through our partner branded funnel whilst still having access to Cathay’s unique offerings and ancillaries.”