During the ALTA AGM & Airline Leaders Forum held in Buenos Aires on October 16-18, we had the opportunity to interview Maximiliano Vicini, Americas Sales Representative of Hitit, a multinational technology company whose footprint in the region has been growing year after year.
“I am very happy to be here where leaders from all over the Americas gather to discuss solutions and find common ground,” said Vicini.
Asked about how he sees the industry after this pandemic period, the executive said that “there are clear signs of recovery, load factors are growing, demand is growing in all countries, and what we are doing in Hitit is to accompany this process of reopening, of rebirth, offering airlines throughout the Americas our solutions and our products, providing flexibility and of course cost optimization and revenue generation, as we have been doing with more than 60 airlines in 6 continents”.
Vicini, being in charge of Sales throughout the Americas, handles a wide diversity of markets and airlines, both in economic and cultural terms, but in that sense he stressed that Hitit has “a model that is based on freedom of distribution, non-traditional direct distribution, we are NDC level 4; and also flexibility in terms of specific requirements, giving immediate slots for developments, which also differentiates us from other competitors”.
“We also offer a fully integrated suite with a one-stop shop approach, in which the company has all its needs covered in all its areas from reservations, inventory, through loyalty, to operations, crew management, cargo and other products, to optimize the operation and generate new revenue,” Vicini added, adding that currently 31% of their customers’ revenue comes from ancillaries, so they have a product that is very much adapted to the low-cost model.
But Hitit also offers standalone solutions so that those companies that cannot migrate from their current PSS systems can use Hitit’s modular products. He mentioned cases such as Aeromar in Mexico, which uses the complete operations suite and the cost accounting suite integrated with Amadeus, or Ultra Air in Colombia, which has other systems, but uses Hitit’s weight & balance system for aircraft dispatch. They are also technology partners of Contour Airlines in the United States, and Winair and Bahamasair in the Caribbean.
“Adapting to the realities of each market has allowed us to participate in numerous RFPs in the region, where we already have 10 clients,” Vicini added.
This is supported, he stressed, on the trajectory of Hitit, which began operating in 1994 with its first development: the frequent flyer system. Then they advanced in the PSS to continue with years of exponential growth even in pandemic, adding 12 new airlines to its portfolio of partners during 2020, 13 in 2021 and about 14 so far in 2022, so it has quadrupled the number in the last three years.
“We have an agile methodology that places the airline at the center, and we have a multidisciplinary team that works in coordination with it, and that was the key to our success, carrying out migrations in record time, in some cases in just one month,” Vicini commented, detailing further that this allowed them to quadruple the number of partners.
In relation to the region Vicini said that they are advancing in an expansion plan that relies on two marketing partners in key markets such as the United States and Brazil, which work in coordination with him to develop Hitit’s presence, in addition to a future local support office in America to serve current partners and those that will be added.
We asked Maximiliano Vicini what he takes away from this ALTA Forum, and he said that he leaves knowing that “there is a light, there is a north”.
“There is a direction in which governments, airlines and suppliers, each one doing their bit, are going to make our industry truly reborn with new ideas, new technologies, new agreements and private initiative, all of which is key for us to continue developing,” he concluded.
