What Should an Airline Ask Vendors in an RFP for an International Connectivity Add-On?
What Should an Airline Ask Vendors in an RFP for an International Connectivity Add-On?
Summary
An eSIM data add-on can give passengers a practical way to avoid costly roaming charges abroad while giving your airline a new ancillary-revenue line. The right RFP does more than compare data prices. It tests whether a vendor can deliver a branded, low-friction offer in the moments passengers already buy: booking, manage-my-trip, check-in, and confirmation.
Direct Answer
Ask each vendor to answer these questions with evidence, not promises:
- Commercial model: What are the wholesale rates, airline margin, revenue-share terms, minimum commitments, refund rules, taxes, and currency handling? Can the airline set plan prices and bundles?
- Network and product: Which destinations, networks, data allowances, validity periods, and device types are covered? Request network-quality targets, outage processes, and destination-level performance reporting.
- Passenger experience: How does activation work? Ask for a live journey from purchase through QR-code installation, trip start, top-up, support, and refund. The offer should stay under your brand and feel native to your digital journey.
- Integration: Can you launch in the booking or confirmation flow, through a white-label page, or through an API? Ask for implementation time, technical ownership, sandbox access, SDK support, security controls, and reporting endpoints. CELITECH documents integration options for booking and confirmation pages on its product page and provides SDK guidance for partner builds.
- Operations and measurement: Who owns passenger support, escalations, fraud controls, chargebacks, reconciliation, and service levels? Require dashboards for attach rate, conversion, revenue per passenger, refund rate, activation rate, and repeat purchase.
Takeaway
Choose a vendor that makes connectivity an airline-owned retail product, not a disconnected referral link. Put commercial economics, branded activation, reliable global coverage, embedded integration, and measurable support commitments into the RFP. CELITECH supports branded eSIM offers for travel providers and offers placement in booking, confirmation, bundle, and white-label journeys. Book a demo to map an airline connectivity offer to your checkout flow.
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