The International Air Transport Association ("IATA") is the global trade organization of the airline industry, representing over 230 airlines comprising 93% of scheduled international air traffic. One of the services IATA conducts for its member airlines is its Billing Settlement Plan ("BSP"), where IATA serves as the clearinghouse for airline tickets sold through travel agencies in over 160 nations around the world. The BSP system handles over 300 million tickets each year, representing over 80% of the world's airline revenue.

The large amount of ticket data that IATA processes through BSP represent an incredible wealth of market intelligence data, representing the customer demand and buying habits for a significant percentage of the airline industry. IATA decided to market its BSP data as a way to produce additional revenue, thereby keeping down its membership costs. In searching for a partner to develop new products, they looked for a firm that not only knew its way around the airlines, but also had the capability to process vast amounts of data and build user-friendly tools to access the information.


IATA selected Diio as its preferred partner in marketing its BSP data over six high-profile information technology firms for many reasons. First, Diio had superior experience developing algorithms to take a sample of market data, and accurately estimate the behavior of the entire market. This skill was vital for IATA, because while BSP data represents a significant portion of the tickets sold around the world, the tickets airlines sell directly to passengers do not flow through the BSP system. The process of starting from a piece of a pie and calibrating to the entire pie is one of Diio's areas of unparalleled expertise. Second, Diio had built extremely successful tools to extract information quickly and easily from large databases. Finally, Diio's previous track record with IATA member airlines guaranteed products credibility among IATA's potential customers.


After the award of the work, Diio and IATA worked together to design, test, and implement multiple products based on BSP data. At the most basic level, two products resulted in the production of flat data files for those customers willing to process these files themselves. The first is Passenger Intelligence Services ("PaxIS"), which provides ticket data based on the actual BSP data. The second is PaxIS Plus, which provides estimates of tickets for the whole industry, accounting for tickets sold outside the BSP system.

Diio also built internet-based, password protected webtools to access BSP data. These webtools feature input screens that are easy to understand and simple to use, and output options that present information simply and effectively. The main tool is also called PaxIS, and is primarily targeted at airlines. Another tool is AirportIS, which brings the same basic data, but at a lower level of detail, to airport clients.

Diio continues to work with IATA to build more products based on IATA's BSP data, continually enhancing the quality and accuracy of its estimation algorithms and adding features to its webtools.


In their first two years on the market, BSP products have produced millions of dollars in revenue for IATA, and successfully lowered membership costs for its airlines.

For its customer IATA, Diio is truly bringing data in, and producing information out.