Sirena held the 11th annual conference “Sirena Connect. E-commerce: technologies and services in the air transportation sales market ”. This year it was held from 19 to 22 April in the capital of the Republic of Armenia, Yerevan, and brought together more than 70 representatives of airlines and heads of agencies. TCH was the official partner of the conference, and S7 Airlines became the logistics partner of the event.In her openings speech, Deputy General Director for Commercial Activities Marina Volodina, Commercial Director of Sirena, noted: “The world is faced with a large-scale crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. During the period of the pandemic, the requirements of airlines and their business models have changed, new priorities have been established. Sirena is doing its best to meet new challenges and meet the needs of airlines in the post-COVID world."
In her speech, Vice President and Commercial Director of TCH Tatyana Merkulova said: “It is already obvious that our life will not return to pre-pandemic in the next year or two. Until a global immunity is formed, we will observe the opening and closing of borders and the sky. We are more fortunate than other countries. Thanks to the vast territory of Russia, domestic transportation is functioning and thereby supporting all of us.
Despite the difficulties in 2020, TCH, as usual, fulfilled all its obligations by 100%. Today we continue to work hard on new projects in close cooperation with Sirena. New technologies of the future are waiting for us! "
The business program of the conference began with a demonstration of air travel statistics during the pandemic. Participants saw that this year airlines generally show a positive trend in bookings and already in the first two weeks of April, the best post-COVID performance was achieved. Charter services for the same period showed a plus by 2019. The industry is waiting for the expansion of regular flights with the CIS countries, which will contribute to the growth rate of air transportation.
As part of the business part of the program, the participants were presented with reports on new trends and distribution strategies in the aviation industry in the post-period period, in particular, the report by Alexander Sukhinin "NDC - a platform for airlines as a basis for building a merchandising system, based on the components: NDC aggregator & Dynamic pricing" ...
Elena Volodina told about new technologies for the sale of additional services at any point of the airport, from the check-in counter to the boarding gate, in her report “Mobile Cashier”. Alexander Kuzmenkov discussed with the participants a graphic terminal for the airline's direct sales channel.
In his speech at the conference, Innokenty Baskakov noted that improving the sales system based on NDC will not only lead to a reduction in integration costs, but also the development of multimodal transportation as a new source of income in the post-COVID world.
Personal meetings between the participants were an important part of the conference program; colleagues were able to discuss pressing problems and details of further cooperation with the Sirena company. Excursion trips to the main sights of Armenia - the ancient monasteries and temples of Khor Virap, Geghard and Garni - became a pleasant addition to the business program.
According to the participants, the Sirena Connect conference has long become a serious discussion platform for a productive dialogue of all aviation industry specialists.