Back to the Future

Offer and Order Management for Airlines, marking the future of airline retailing, was first conceptualized by the initial team at Galileo International in 1988 at the new Fokker building in Amsterdam.

The implementation of Offer and Order Management, featuring dynamic bundling, options, and links to railways, tour operators, and travel insurance providers, went live in 1989 under the brands traviswiss and traviaustria for travel agencies in Switzerland and Austria. Most tour operators connected via XML—and for those who remember, this included an early version of Galileo XML and GMIR. The product featured integrated ledger accounting with interfaces to financial management systems, bypassing traditional revenue accounting altogether.

A few years later, we introduced further integrations with Navision for NOKAIR and Germania, and with SAP R/3 for Swiss Railways and Merpati Indonesia.

Even our original PSS, tikAERO, included sales, cash, general, and inventory ledgers within the system, complete with all necessary account mappings—20 years ago.

Now, in 2024, the airline industry appears set on reinventing what was accomplished long ago. I remember when we rolled out these features, an airline manager told me, "You don’t understand how the business works." Perhaps the team at TIK Systems was simply ahead of its time.