What it is, why it matters, and why everyone keeps meaning something slightly different
As airlines move deeper into Offers and Orders, one concept keeps resurfacing: the product catalogue.
Depending on who you ask, it is described as the cornerstone of modern airline retailing, a critical dependency, or a technical detail that can be addressed later. In practice, all three interpretations often appear in the same meeting. This post does not try to declare a single “correct” view. Instead, it aims to cut through some of the fog around what a product catalogue actually is, why it matters now, and where the industry broadly aligns and still diverges on how it should evolve. If nothing else, it should help ensure that when three people say “product catalogue”, they are at least discussing the same thing.
What we actually mean by “product catalogue”
In simple terms, a product catalogue is the single source of truth for what an airline sells.
It defines products and services in a structured way, including their attributes and relationships, independent of price, inventory availability, or channel. A quick clarification helps here because the word rules often causes confusion. In this context, product rules describe product eligibility, relationships, and consumption conditions, not pricing logic, revenue optimisation, or offer construction decisions. Put simply, the catalogue describes what a product is, what it includes, what it can be combined with, and what conditions apply once it is sold. It does not determine price or decide which products are offered to a specific customer. A modern airline product catalogue typically includes:
- Core air products and fare families
- Ancillaries such as baggage, seats, meals, lounge access, and flexibility
- Bundles and branded offers
- Non-air and partner products
- Product attributes, relationships, and consumption conditions
Just as importantly, it defines what it does not do. A product catalogue should not handle:
- Pricing or revenue optimisation
- Offer construction logic
- Inventory or stock management
- Order lifecycle management such as servicing or accounting
Those capabilities sit alongside the catalogue, not inside it.
A simple way to separate responsibilities
One way to keep responsibilities clear is to separate them explicitly:
- The catalogue defines the what (products, attributes, relationships, conditions)
- Pricing engines define the how much
- Offer engines define the when, to whom, and in what combination
- Order systems manage the after-sale reality
When these roles blur, teams often spend surprising amounts of time explaining why something “technically works” but “commercially cannot be sold”.
The problem the product catalogue is really trying to solve
The renewed focus on product catalogues comes directly from the limitations airlines encounter when trying to move beyond fare-centric retailing. In many airlines today:
- Product definition is embedded inside fare structures and distribution logic
- Flexibility, bundles, and conditions remain tightly coupled to price
- Launching new products requires coordination across multiple systems
- The same product appears differently across dotcom, NDC, GDS, and other channels
- Scaling dynamic offers becomes fragile, slow, or both
None of this is accidental. These systems were designed to optimise distribution, not retailing. A product catalogue addresses this by decoupling product definition from legacy constructs, allowing airlines to:
- Define products once and reuse them everywhere
- Unbundle and recombine products more flexibly
- Reduce channel inconsistencies
- Shorten time to market
- Support richer retail propositions
Seen this way, the product catalogue is not a shiny innovation layer. It is plumbing. Important plumbing, the kind you only notice when it is missing.
Where the industry mostly agrees
Despite the noise, there is more alignment than disagreement across the industry.
First, product must be separated from price. Without that separation, dynamic pricing and contextual bundling remain constrained by legacy logic. Second, richer product definition is essential. Codes and text strings are not enough if systems and channels are expected to understand what is being sold. Third, the product catalogue is foundational, underpinning offers, orders, servicing, and cross-channel consistency. Finally, transition will be hybrid for a long time. No airline is switching off fare filing, PSS, or legacy distribution overnight. Any realistic catalogue must coexist with today’s systems while enabling tomorrow’s.
These points are increasingly accepted, which is encouraging. It also means the harder discussions tend to begin once consensus is reached.
Where views still diverge
The real divergence is not about whether a product catalogue is needed, but about what role it should play in the wider ecosystem. From an airline perspective, control over product definition is closely tied to differentiation, speed, and long-term commercial flexibility. For larger airline groups in particular, the catalogue increasingly represents core retail intellectual property. From an industry utility perspective, the challenge looks different. Utilities focus on scale, interoperability, and transition safety, providing common structures that allow participants at different levels of retail maturity to operate together. These perspectives are not contradictory, but they lead to different design instincts. This raises practical questions:
- Should product catalogues be airline controlled, vendor provided, or industry hosted?
- How much product definition should be standardised versus airline specific?
- Does shared infrastructure enable retailing, or quietly shape it?
- How do interline and partner scenarios work without limiting innovation?
A useful nuance is that “airline controlled” does not necessarily mean “built in-house.”
Many airlines will rely on vendor platforms to implement their catalogue. The key issue is not who runs the software, but who owns the product model and controls how differentiation is expressed. Most credible paths forward point toward hybrid approaches, combining airline control with shared languages and taxonomies where they genuinely add value. Hybrid is rarely exciting. It is often correct.
What a product catalogue should be, and what it should avoid becoming
Based on current industry experience, some boundaries are becoming clearer.
A product catalogue should be:
- Airline controlled, with clear governance
- Flexible across air and non-air products
- Explicitly separated from pricing and offer optimisation
- Consistent across channels
A product catalogue should not become:
- Fare filing with better marketing
- A hidden pricing engine
- A hidden offer engine
- A constraint on product innovation
When those lines blur, airlines risk recreating the rigidity they are trying to escape.
Why this matters now
The product catalogue sits at the intersection of technology, commercial strategy, and organisation. Getting it right is not just a systems exercise. It shapes how airlines design products, move at speed, and collaborate across an increasingly complex ecosystem.
As the industry moves from experimentation toward scale, these choices become harder to postpone. They will influence whether Offers and Orders become a genuine retailing shift or simply another layer added on top of existing constraints. That is why the conversation is moving from “Do we need a product catalogue?” to “What role should it play, what should it strictly not do, and who should it ultimately serve?” This is exactly the discussion we explore in an upcoming TiMcast episode, bringing together an airline group perspective and an industry utility perspective. Different viewpoints, same problem, and inevitably different instincts on how to solve it.
Which, in this space, is probably a healthy sign.
Roman van Alten, Travel in Motion AG
This post had been published in cooperation with Terrapinn and the World Aviation Festival.