Month: October 2025

Matthias Viehmann, Professor of Aviation Management and Quantitative Methods at University of Applied Sciences Worms, supports Travel in Motion (TiM) in revenue management and dynamic pricing. With airlines transitioning to Modern Airline Retailing (MAR), the offer process is becoming key to enhancing the customer experience and increasing airline revenue.
Matthias, who holds a PhD in economics from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), combines airline experience gained during his career at Lufthansa and consulting various airlines with the latest academic research in this highly complex and scientific field. Hochschule Worms is one of the leading European research and educational institutions for aviation management.
Jointly with TiM’s Senior Advisor, Peter Schöber, and other leading TiM experts, Matthias will strengthen TiM’s capabilities in revenue management and dynamic offer consulting. Matthias’s academic foundation elevates the partnership with TiM beyond joint projects to also include practice-driven research.
Do you want to get to know Matthias? He will host one of our next TiMcast, focusing on the latest trends in revenue management – stay tuned!

 

 

 

 

Wow – what a journey it has been. Time flies when you are having fun, and fun it has been. On 6 October 2015, Nick Stott and Daniel Friedli officially incorporated Travel in Motion GmbH – at that time as a limited liability company (LLC) with very limited future growth plans or vision, simply aiming to provide their knowledge and experience to the industry without the influence of an employer acting in its own interest rather than that of the customer. Since then, we have grown into a team of 17 highly motivated and experienced aviation experts with a strong focus on the digital transformation of airlines’ commercial processes and systems.

From a two-man show with the occasional freelancer to support us when workloads increased, we gradually expanded. We had a decision to make, and we made it. We decided to grow and add value to our industry not only by helping airlines and vendors tackle their commercial strategic growth but also by being a bridge between the numerous players in the ecosystem. The evolution of our industry is only possible if all market participants aim for the same target and overcome incumbent conflicting interests – and we want to play a fundamental role in enabling this.

We hired our first employees and expanded our ownership structure to include Boris Padovan and Andrea Riesen, both of whom helped set the foundation for our growth plan. With them, we began executing our expansion. Our first few employees were instrumental in convincing us that growth is the right trajectory. However, this was just the beginning. Soon we realised that our small team was no longer able to manage the demand and that we’d need additional people. However, hiring is not easy and finding the right match in terms of knowledge and skill as well as the ability to engage with customers in a constructive and empathetic manner proved more challenging than expected. We started to look beyond the borders of Switzerland and decided that a multinational team spread throughout Europe would work as well. It was more important to grow sustainably than quickly.

Prior to the organic growth, we used 2022 to enter into a very fruitful strategic partnership with Oystin Advisory, a German consulting firm focused on the distribution aspect of airlines. Our partnership with Oystin has also been pivotal to our expansion, as together we serve our airline customers in all areas of distribution – from commercial strategies to transformation strategies, and from distribution contracting to technology procurement and contracting. With this additional momentum from that collaboration, we were headed for additional growth. To cater for that growth, we transition from a limited liability company (LLC) to a true shareholding in July 2024.

Soon, we had team members in the UK, Finland, Croatia, France, Germany, Estonia and Portugal – a new challenge in terms of communication and coordination but one we gladly take upon us. We not only had various nationalities represented, but also varying degrees of experience and different fields. We also had a number of specialists as freelancers – people who excel in a specific area and can support TiM with long-term industry experience and key pockets of knowledge which will help us cover an even wider scope in the airline commercial scope.

A big step for Travel in Motion in 2025 was incorporating Joachim Zintl’s Tailwind Consulting into TiM. That allowed our group of partners to grow from three to four, with Joachim Zintl  joining us to further expand Travel in Motion in the area of payment, settlement and airline finance.

At the same time, TiM had to become more professional while maintaining its spirit and start-up-like enthusiasm. We had to build an internal organisation with defined responsibilities and processes – not always easy, as we wanted to maintain the momentum that comes from a motivated team. We didn’t want to build hierarchies but needed to implement more structure. With that, in April 2025 we transition to a structure with better defined leadership roles, clear responsibilities over company strategy, marketing, business development, human resources and finance. Optimising business operations had become much more important.

Looking back, we are proud to have overcome the biggest hurdles including COVID, early teething challenges and establishing an internal structure, without compromising our spirit, openness and love for the work we do. We have been able to maintain a culture of professionalism while being fair and doing all we can first and foremost in our customer’s interest, not in ours or not in the interest of an external entity. At the same time, we have been able to build a team of like-minded and motivated people to carry our message and methodology into the world. And, we have built a team with many younger people with new ideas, new ways of working and an excitement for this industry, which is unparalleled,

Looking forward, we are confident that we can maintain this momentum, and we will continue to work every day in every engagement to remain your partner of choice and trust. Thank you for carrying us to where we are today! We are incredibly proud of our team, we have kept its spirit, and we continue to thrive in serving our industry: airlines, vendors and industry bodies.

Daniel Friedli, Travel in Motion AG

P.S. Interested in more official and less official background on ten years of TiM? Listen to our October TiMcast, where Daniel Friedli, Nick Stott, Boris Padovan and Joachim Zintl share one story or another, moderated by Susan Carter.

 

 

 

 

Are you attending IATA’s World Passenger Symposium or World Financial Symposium in Istanbul on 5 and 6 November? If you are, we would like to draw your attention to our second Airline IT Vendor Distribution and Retailing Masterclass, as several airline IT vendor partners have approached us asking for a dedicated masterclass for the vendor community.

We are therefore pleased to announce that we will hold our next

Airline IT Vendor Distribution and Retailing Masterclass – exclusively for the vendor community – in

Istanbul on 4 November 2025

(the day before IATA’s World Passenger and World Financial Symposiums)
from 12:00 to 18:00. It will be followed by a joint drinks reception with finger food.

Our agenda includes sharing insights from our airline engagements, providing thought leadership and offering a forum for the vendor community to exchange ideas and discuss without airline participation:

12:00 Kick-off with a joint lunch
13:00 Status of the industry
13:45 Perceived challenges of the transition to modern airline retailing
    Views from an industry and airline perspective
14:45 What airlines are considering in their procurement processes
15:45 Break
16:15 Learnings from TiM engagements
17:00 TiM’s recommendations to the vendor community
17:30 Discussion and wrap-up
18:00 Drinks reception with finger food
20:00 Finish

The fee is CHF 1,750 per person, with a reduction of 15% for the second ticket and 25% for the third and any further tickets purchased by employees of the same company.

You may register here for this event.

We look forward to discussing and seeing you in Istanbul.