Brett: Good morning. Before we get started, I want to just take a moment to introduce myself. This is my first Elevate and I'm incredibly excited to be here and we have an amazing line up of speakers.

We have an amazing agenda, and I hope that it will be helpful and educational to each one of you. For those of you I haven't met, I'm Brett Burgess, and it truly is an honor to be here with you as the new CEO of ATPCO.

I also want to acknowledge the moment that we're in. These are complex and at times uncertain times for our industry and the world around us. And so, the fact that you're here taking the time to connect with each other and taking the time to connect with us really matters. And I hope that we can move our industry forward together.

So, thank you again for being here. Let me start with a moment that most of us have experienced. A traveler does a flight search. Within seconds, they see options, prices, bundles, seat choices, destinations. And in that moment, it all feels, to the traveler at least, incredibly simple. But everyone in this room knows what sits behind that moment.

Thousands of data elements, dozens of systems, pricing decisions and offer decisions happening in milliseconds. Distribution networks spanning the globe, all connected by technology. And somehow all that complexity has to come together in one moment to create a clear offer for the traveler. That moment where complexity turns into clarity is where airline retailing happens, and it's exactly where ATPCO has played a role for more than 60 years.

ATPCO supports the flow of data that enables airline retailing across the globe, powering billions of pricing and offer decisions. It happened so often, in fact, that last year that translated into an average of 1.5 billion records delivered to the industry every day. 1 1/2 billion records.

So, it's an honor to stand here today as the CEO of an organization most travelers will never see. Hopefully will never need to know about but one this industry depends on every single day. Having spent the last few years of my career on the operational side of the industry, I'm excited to return to retailing. I'm excited to be in this part of the industry again at a pivotal moment where I believe the opportunity for impact in our industry has never been greater.

And I take that responsibility very seriously because the truth is we're continuing to operate in one of the most dynamic and sometimes chaotic periods in our history since 2019. I'm going to share some information with you, some data with you. Since 2019, passenger revenue has grown at about 2.2% annually. We went back to 2019 to predate COVID to kind of remove the noise from that.

So, we can make good comparisons on the data. So, 2.2% annually is passenger revenue. Passenger volumes over the same time period have grown at about 2.4%. So, more passengers, passenger volume has grown a little faster than revenue. And when we look at that data and we look a little bit deeper, we can see that the trend is actually accelerating in the wrong direction. In 2024, revenue grew over 5% year over year. In 2025 revenue, total passenger revenue grew just over 1.6% even as airlines in that same time period added 6.7% more passengers.

So, revenue is growing, passenger volume is growing faster. And what all that means is airlines over this time period are earning a little bit less per passenger. At the same time, over 70% of airlines are increasing IT spend with technology investments growing at 4 to 8% annually. So, the equation is changing in terms of how we attract passengers, how we retail to them and how we how we earn money. So, revenue growth is slowing.

The cost to generate that revenue is increasing. Distribution is evolving as a result of that, and pricing is becoming even more dynamic and AI is accelerating all of that. So, every airline in this room and every partner in this room is navigating the same reality. We've got more data, more systems carrying that data, more channels, more decisions, more unknowns.

And all of this more is happening at a scale and a cost of the airline and a pace that we could not have imagined a few years ago. And when things start moving faster, when complexity increases the way that we're seeing it, when the unknowns are still unknown, a trusted foundation becomes even more important.  

Because in this environment, success isn't just about moving faster. It's about moving with clarity and control. And that only happens when the data underneath it all is trusted, transparent, and consistent. At its core, our industry exists to offer global experiences to our travelers and to connect travelers with those experiences all across the world.

Those experiences obviously don't begin with packing for the airport and airline retailing. They begin much earlier. Before a seat is selected, before a payment is made, before a boarding pass is issued, there's an offer. An offer that tells the traveler what's available, what it costs and what value they get with the offer.

In modern airline retailing, success depends on delivering the right offer to the right customer at the right time. This is something we probably all heard and all said. What every offer begins with though, is data. Trusted data. Shared data. And that's where ATPCO really comes in.

When we say that ATPCO is the foundation of modern retailing, we mean that we provide a modern foundational data layer that makes retailing innovation possible. On top of it, at ATPCO, we curate the industry core data into four critical areas, pricing, product and merchandising, market in competitive and sales and settlement.

But what matters isn't just the data itself, it's what that data enables. It enables airlines to create, and price offers, to define and present their products clearly, to understand how they're performing in the market and to work seamlessly with partners, all at a global scale across hundreds of airlines, thousands of markets, and with over 20 million fare changes every day. And during the past two months, as many of you have experienced, we saw the number of fare changes grow to more than double what we typically see on an average day, up to 80 million fare changes every day as the airlines across the globe quickly responded to the geopolitical conditions and the fluctuating oil prices.

Even at that scale, our system held maintaining trusted data and continuous availability throughout that. So, when we talk about being the foundation, we're really talking about the data and the technology that enables airline retailing to operate at a global scale in an uninterrupted way.

ATPCO's role has always evolved alongside the airline industry. We began more than 60 years ago with pricing data, helping airlines manage the complexity of fares and rules across a global network. And as airline retailing has evolved, we've continued strengthening that data layer that supports it all and building solutions that support modern airline retailing.

It starts with understanding what's happening in the market. And so, in 2023, we acquired 3Victors because we saw where the industry was heading. As airlines move toward more dynamic offers, there's a clear gap not in pricing itself. We have the ability to cover every price point that an airline needs, but in the data that is required to create dynamic offers at scale and in real time. Because as pricing becomes more dynamic, it's no longer enough to understand what's filed.

You also need to understand what's actually being shopped and purchased. And shopping data provides real visibility into how the market is behaving, what customers are seeing, comparing, and choosing. And by combining 3Victors AI capabilities with ATPCO's, data and global scale, we're able to deliver a level of accuracy and trusted insight that the industry really hasn't seen before.

But we're also thinking actually one step earlier, before an offer is created, before pricing decisions are made. What if airlines could better understand where the demand is coming from?

And that's where we're headed next. With DemandView, we're extending those insights upstream, helping airlines see how the market is reacting in near real time so that an airline can make better and more informed decisions around network planning, demand forecasting.

Because better offers don't just start with pricing, they start with a deeper understanding of demand and specific demand, market specific demand. Once an offer is created though, how it's presented to the customer matters almost as much as what the offer actually is.

And that's where Routehappy comes in, enabling airlines to deliver the modern shopping experience that today's travelers expect. Routehappy continues to grow rapidly across the industry. In fact, the number of airlines using Routehappy retailing data has increased by over 150% over the last year, and today, Routehappy attributes cover 90% of all available seat kilometers worldwide, generating more than 46,000,000 API calls every day.

But creating and presenting the offer is only part of the challenge. Delivering it at scale is essential. And one of the roles that ATPCO has played for decades is as the industry's neutral data exchange. It's how we've supported pricing, acting as a single shared connection point across the ecosystem. And now we're extending that same model to a product to product data through a solution that we call the product catalog.

The way product catalog works or the way we envision the product catalog working is that airlines will primarily manage their product catalog within their own offer systems. But when it comes to working with other airlines through things like interlining and joint ventures or when it comes to distributing their offers beyond their own website, beyond their own endpoints, the product catalog serves as a data exchange. ATPCO provides the exchange layer, a single connection that allows the product data to reach partners, sellers, aggregators across the industry.

And instead of building and maintaining those connections individually for every single relationship, the product catalog can help airlines reach the network in really an endlessly flexible way. And that eliminates or at least reduces some of the complexity of scaling distribution in a dynamic environment. It creates one to many efficiency, faster partner on boarding, and consistent, reliable data exchange that preserves an airline's independence even as standards continue to evolve.

Each of these solutions that I've just walked through reflects the same goal, strengthening the data layer that allows airline retailing to evolve. Because as offers become more dynamic, more personalized, and more intelligent, the need for trusted data only increases. And that brings us to another major shift shaping our industry, artificial intelligence.

I don't think it could be a conference if I didn't stand on the stage and talk about AI. And those who know me well will be surprised that I made it this far in the presentation before I actually talk about AI. But I believe AI is a game changer for airline retailing. It is already changing how airlines think about marketing. It's already changing how offers are created, how the travel experience is fulfilled, and how demand is forecasted.

At ATPCO, we recently conducted research across airlines representing different regions and business models to better understand how airlines are thinking about adopting AI and particularly adopting agentic AI. And what we found was revealing.

Today, only 11% of the airlines that we talked to are actively working with external AI agents to build agentic experiences and only 39% currently have dedicated AI teams or programs in place.

So clearly there is an interest, but I believe this will grow quickly in the coming months. While the potential for AI is enormous, we're still in the very early stages of adopting that. But in the end, again, coming back to the data that powers offers, AI is only as powerful as the foundation it's built on. And it depends on data that it can trust, that it can understand where the meaning is consistent, where it's what, where the meaning is governed, and where the meaning is shared across the industry.

Because it's not just about having structured data but having data that is clearly understood with semantic and conceptual connections that help an AI make sense of it all. Exactly the kind of data that ATPCO has been managing for decades.

And so as intelligent systems begin making more decisions, and as the volume and the speed of data continues to increase, the importance of that foundation becomes even greater. And our responsibility is to ensure that the industry score data layer remains consistent, scalable and AI ready.

Because ATPCOs role is not simply to distribute data, it's to ensure intelligent systems can operate across the ecosystem without fragmentation. That means shared understanding, meaningful data, frameworks that allow the industry to innovate together. And as data becomes more, as data takes more forms, what stays constant is the need for shared meaning and interoperability.

And as we move forward together, ATPCO will utilize AI aggressively and responsibly to help improve insight and automation while maintaining the trust and operational discipline that this industry has come to rely on.

As I step into this role as Ceo I want to make something very clear. ATPCO will remain relentlessly focused on your success. Enabling airline retailing has always been at the heart of what we do, and that mission remains unchanged. We will continue investing in capabilities that support trusted, meaningful data, interoperability, and shared frameworks because innovation is most powerful when this industry moves forward together.

And that brings us back to this year's theme. Data in motion, offers an action. Data in motion means accurate, trusted data flowing across systems, across airlines, across platforms, across the global retailing ecosystem. Offers in action means those offers reaching travelers clearly priced correctly, delivered timely, settled reliably, and measured effectively. Because airline retailing only works when the entire journey from data to offer to experience works together.

And in a world where decisions are moving faster, where AI is accelerating innovation, where architectures are evolving step by step, the industry needs stability underneath that motion. And that's what the Foundation provides. Over the next two days, you'll hear from leaders across the industry who are tackling these challenges firsthand.

You'll hear about AI enabled innovation, about product interoperability, about shopping intelligence, about the modernization journeys airlines are navigating right now. And most importantly, you'll hear real stories of airline retail transformation happening all across the industry. So, when a traveler books a flight, they don't see the complexity behind the scenes.

They don't see the data models; they don't see the distribution systems. What they see is clarity. They see confidence. They see an airline they can trust. And our job together is to strengthen what makes that possible, because modern airline retailing starts with the offer and the offer starts with data, and the data starts here.

Welcome to Elevate.

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