Look-to-Book: managing search volumes while creating customer-centric Offers

As customer expectations grow and digital interactions become more frequent and complex, airlines are facing a surge in search volumes -- a trend that is driving up Look-to-Book (LTB) ratios and straining systems, costs, and the customer experience. 

In response to this growing challenge, and at the request of the IATA Distribution Advisory Council, IATA worked with over 30 airline ecosystem partners to produce the white paper: "Look to Book - Managing search volumes while creating relevant offers for the customer".

This collaborative effort brought together 14 airlines, 11 IT providers, and 8 sellers (including OTAs and metasearch engines) to explore how the airline retailing ecosystem can better manage LTB while improving offer relevance and operational efficiency.

The paper is intended as a foundation for industry-wide dialogue and action -- not a set of prescriptions, but a starting point for collective progress.

What you’ll find inside:

• Nine practical propositions to help manage LTB ratios.
• New performance metrics, such as Offer-to-Order and CPU-to-Order, that reflect the realities of modern airline retailing.
• Insights into the role of Generative and Agentic AI in shaping search volumes and offer creation.
• A collaboration toolkit to foster transparency and alignment across the ecosystem.
• Recommendations for evolving standards, caching strategies, and offer workflows to support a more efficient and customer-centric retailing model.

Access the full white paper here for an ecosystem-shared perspective on how the industry can better manage LTB while improving offer relevance and operational efficiency.