OAG Lands in China

Airline schedule giant opens its doors in Beijing

By CHEN WEN

Seventy years ago, an independent company that compiles and distributes airline schedule information, managed about 35 airlines and information on 300 flights. Today it handles almost 1,000 airlines and 140,000 flights. The company is Official Airline Guides, or, OAG, a global leader in airline flight schedules sourcing.

OAG is based in the UK and the United States, with regional offices in Asia. It has already established three regional headquarters in Dunstable, Chicago and Singapore, nine regional offices and 17 other distributors around the world. And it is still looking to expand in India, according to Eddie Bell, Chairman of OAG Worldwide.

With a background in book publishing, Bell compared OAG’s work with his former work. He jokingly concluded that the biggest difference is that “we used to launch about 1,200 new products every year in the book industry and, in OAG, we would probably launch perhaps 12 new products this year.”

This February, OAG opened a representative office in Beijing and is looking for local partners. Talking of business operation here in the Chinese capital, Bell said that China is a very big and very different market. “We want to learn about the market and we’re prepared to learn,” he said.

Bell summarized OAG’s strategy in China for the coming year. A priority was rounding up competent office staff, which has already been done. Next is looking for a co-publishing partner, which is still in the works. “We want to promote our products and develop local Chinese products. We want to open other offices in China and invest in the new technology,” Bell explained.

The company has teamed up with hotels, airlines, airports, travel agents, tourism offices, car rental and cell phone companies to promote OAG products, including online information, electronics and books, via advertising and joint promotions.

The chairman admitted that this would take time, adding, “We’re very patient.” He believed that in a year from now the company would expand significantly in China. “I think we’ll have opened another office by then, and I think we’ll find partnership with other types of customers. But we’re going to be very careful.”

Bell predicted that by the end of next year the company would become profitable in China.

Although a global leader in its field, OAG does not regard itself as monopolistic. “We have a number of competitors. It’s a very competitive market,” said Bell. They have competitors in Europe, the Americas and Asia.

“We don’t want to be a monopoly, because competition is what keeps you thinking and keeps you investing. We like competition, which helps you be creative.” Bell said.

The chairman believes his company is unique because OAG is the only one in its field to verify and update its flight schedules daily. “We’re the only company that spends money and time verifying and updating schedules to make sure they’re accurate and most importantly, up to date,” said the chairman.

This extra effort on accuracy is the company’s mantra, which may explain their success.

“People trust our data, because we have checked it,” said Bell. “Information is coming in 24 hours a day. And we’re changing our information almost 12,000 times a day.” What OAG does is to compile schedules from almost 1,000 airlines across the world, and confirm them to ensure the highest accuracy possible.

“This is very complicated data as you could imagine. They come in very different formats to our offices. We put them in the computer and we create a lot of consolidated airline schedules,” Bell noted, adding, “to do so, you have to have very high-quality staff.”

Bell is proud of his staff, most of whom, as he said, have been working in the company for 25 or 30 years. He believes that OAG has expertise second to none in the industry.