“We are one of the first business travel agencies to be directly connected with Air France”rejoices Maxime Pialat, the founder and CEO of the startup SuperTripper. A great coup for this “digital native” travel agency, specializing in the booking and management of professional trips, launched in 2018.
With this collaboration, the entrepreneur takes a further step in realizing his ambition: “modernizing the business travel experience”, by focusing on both the quality of the interface and cost optimization. .
Access to the latest innovations from Air France-KLM
In fact, by connecting directly to Air France-KLM data, without the usual intermediaries, SuperTripper can now offer a more personalized booking experience and total transparency on prices, which are updated in real time. Additional advantage: modification, cancellation and addition of additional equipment can now be done directly online on the agency's platform, thus limiting the need for human intervention.
“Thanks to this direct connection, Supertripper is not only able to offer our best prices, but also to very quickly offer access to our latest innovations”explains Hervé Kozar, Air France-KLM Corporate Sales Director.
A competitive advantage
To achieve this, SuperTripper was able to rely on Direct Connect NDC (New Distribution Capability) technology: announced by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) in 2012, this is gradually being deployed by airlines and should become the new standard on the market. Based on XML language, it facilitates the exchange of data between tour operators and companies and allows enriched dissemination of offers as well as the addition of personalized options.
For a year, the developers of SuperTripper worked hand in hand with the technical and commercial teams of Air France – KLM to optimize the exchange of information and optimize the experience for users. “The main challenge was to create an interface that did not yet exist in business travel and to integrate it perfectly into our SaaS”specifies Maxime Pialat, who today believes that the effort made was largely offset by the competitive advantage thus created.
V2 and European ambitions
The entrepreneur is now thinking about the next steps: V2 should allow better management of multi-destination travel – a specificity and complexity specific to business travel – and the integration of new options when booking, such as the choice of menu or contribution to the purchase of “Sustainable Aviation Fuel” (SAF).
With a clientele mainly of SMEs and mid-sized companies, SuperTripper has around fifty employees and is experiencing growth of 50% per year, with the objective of becoming a European leader in its market. Its development has been completely self-financed since its fundraising of 1 million euros in 2019, carried out with UL Invest, 50 Partners and business angels.
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