Direct Connect

Direct Connect for Airlines

It is our goal to provide our customers in the travel industry with the largest choice of tailored flight offers at reasonable distribution costs. Thus, beyond our cooperation with the leading GDS’, it is absolutely essential to provide direct connections to scheduled and low-cost airlines worldwide.

Benefit from our expertise in direct airline connections and start distributing your air content to our large client base of Travel Agencies, OTAs and TMCs within Europe and worldwide.

Who we are?

HitchHiker is an independent travel software company, established in 1992 and based in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Our customers comprise some of the biggest airlines, consolidators, OTAs, travel agency chains, tour operators and TMCs in Europe and worldwide. Amongst them are many renowned travel companies such as Bravofly, Hotelplan, HRG, STA Travel, Sundio, Travelbird and vtours.

Our core product, the “Flight API”, offers connectivity to six GDS’, Farelogix, direct connections to more than 100 low-cost airlines, over 30 charter carriers/suppliers and the capability to sell own net fares and flight allotments.

A comfortable web-service API allows for quick integration of booking, ticketing and other service functionality in any online shop, distribution or tour operator system. Moreover, based on this API HitchHiker has developed a sophisticated Agent booking platform tailored to the needs of Consolidators, Travel Agencies and Call Centers.

Our experience?

HitchHiker has established more than 100 direct connections to several airline APIs, websites and reservation systems such as Airkiosk, Avantik, Genius, Navitaire, Radixx, Sabre Sonic and Worldticket.

Our portfolio of direct airline connections today includes carriers like Airberlin, Air Arabia, Blue Air, Blue Islands, Condor, Corendon, Germania, Germanwings, Intersky, Jet2.com, Jetairfly, Jetstar, Norwegian, Skywork Airlines, Transavia, TUIfly, Virgin Australia and Vueling. To view a full list of our content, please click here.

In 2015 HitchHiker has officially been appointed technology partner of the Lufthansa Group relating to “Direct Connect Access”. Read more …

Our partnership with British Airways based on the new IATA NDC Standard has been announced in July 2017. Read more …

Your benefits?

  • Provide your resellers (OTAs, TMCs and Travel Agents) with the opportunity to sell a richer air content to leisure and business travelers, which was, until now, only possible through direct channels.
  • Differentiate your airline from the fierce competition on the market and attract business customers and quality product shoppers by providing them with true added-value.
  • Increase customer loyalty through tailored and personalized offers and marketing campaigns.
  • Gain flexibility through dynamic pricing.
  • Use your upselling opportunities and improve profitability by increased ancillary revenue.
  • Cut distribution costs and distribute your fares to various resellers/agencies by connecting to one single API.

Interested in working with us?

  1. Please contact our sales team by sending an e-mail to sales@hitchhiker.net or give us a call (+49 69 507030).
  2. Please provide us with your or your reservation systems’ API specification and any NDAs that need to be signed.
  3. We will estimate the time required for our development team to connect your API to our system.
  4. Based on our customers’ priorities we will commence with the development. If we identify a high demand amongst our customers the implementation is usually done free of charge to the airline. (Agencies/resellers will be charged an implementation or booking fee.)
  5. Technical support is delivered free of charge to the airline.
  6. Technical and operational support for agencies and resellers is covered by our service agreements with said agencies.
  7. The scalable architecture of our system will adapt to the specific load of any of your resellers.
  8. Good to know: HitchHiker is compliant with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard as certified by Acertigo. The following payment methods are supported by our system: credit cards (without 3D secure), debit cards and agency payments.