OptionTown is a technology company that helps airlines upsell and optimise their revenues with passengers. As a portal, OptionTown supports the ability to bid for upgrades, buy ancillary products like priority services and excess baggage and lounge access. They have partnerships with about 30 airlines across the globe, including the likes of Air India, FlyDubai, OmanAir and others.

Air Vistara OptionTown have been partners for a few years now. While airlines usually work inside the capabilities of their own passenger reservation systems and GDS’s to upsell services, Vistara has been working with OptionTown for a long while, as their own platform which is based on Amadeus evolves in terms of capabilities over the years. In the meanwhile, there are new capabilities in the market with the NDC (New Distribution Capabilities), which allow for airlines to directly sell via their Global Distribution Systems as well.

Vistara used to sell the following products via OptionTown:

• Vistara Priority (Priority handling at airports)
• Cabin Upgrades
• Excess Baggage
• Lounge Access
• Flight Pass (Ticket booklets for multiple tickets at a fixed price)
• Carry-On Plus (More Cabin baggage allowance)

Now, Vistara has posted a note on their website, that asks for customers to not deal with OptionTown for all of the above services.

Vistara has assured customers that these services can still be availed by contacting Vistara directly. On the other hand, there is no such notice on the website of OptionTown at all and it continues to work as if it is Business as Usual.

Bottomline

In a nutshell, if you fly Vistara, you should not be dealing with OptionTown going ahead. I am not sure if Vistara has upgraded its own platform to be able to make these sales on their own, but we will find out soon enough as we get back into flying.

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