Senior Consultant - Airline Retail Strategy

Senior Consultant - Airline Retail Strategy

Location: Hybrid work model, must be based in Europe (willingness to move to Frankfurt preferred)

Type: Full-time

About Us

Oystin Advisory GmbH is an aviation consultancy helping airlines navigate complex commercial and distribution strategy transformations. We work alongside airline leadership teams to make sense of a crowded, hype-driven landscape and turn it into pragmatic, sequenced plans they can actually execute.

Our Philosophy

We give independent, honest advice — full stop. If the right recommendation for a particular carrier, given their circumstances, is “do nothing for now, but stay vigilant and agile,” that is a completely legitimate outcome and one we're proud to deliver. We're not paid by vendors and we don't have an MAR transformation to sell; our job is to tell clients the truth about what they need and when, even when that means recommending patience over action. This is core to who we are, and we're looking for someone who genuinely believes in advising this way, not just someone who can recite it in an interview.

The Role

We're looking for a consultant to advise our airline clients on their commercial and retailing strategy with a particular focus on helping them figure out what to do, in what order, and when.

This is not a role for someone who wants to produce hundred-row requirement matrices or manage RFP scoring sheets. It's a role for someone who has genuinely sat inside an airline's commercial, distribution, or IT organization (or inside a MAR vendor selling into airlines) and understands why these transformations succeed, stall, or quietly fail.

You'll help clients set realistic goals, understand true dependencies and sequencing, and resist the considerable industry pressure to move faster than their organization, data, or systems can actually support. A recurring part of the job will be helping clients distinguish genuine urgency from FOMO.

You'll also be expected to have a well-formed, evolving point of view on how Agentic AI is likely to reshape MAR — where it will accelerate timelines, where it will disrupt existing vendor roadmaps and business cases, and where it's still more narrative than substance.

What You'll Do

• Advise airline clients on MAR strategy, roadmap, and business case development, with a focus on realistic goal setting and phasing rather than exhaustive requirements definition
• Help clients assess where they genuinely are in their commercial, technical, and organizational readiness for MAR, and translate that into a defensible sequencing plan
• Push back — constructively — on unrealistic timelines driven by vendors, industry hype cycles, or internal pressure, and help clients build the case for a more measured pace where warranted
• Be willing and able to recommend “do nothing for now, but stay vigilant and agile” when that's genuinely the right call for a carrier's circumstances — and defend that recommendation with the same rigor as a recommendation to move forward
• Assess and interpret how Agentic AI is influencing MAR platforms, vendor strategies, and airline retailing models, and advise clients on the practical implications for their own transition plans
• Act as a trusted sounding board for airline executives and program leads working through NDC, Offer/Order management, and related retailing transformation decisions
• Support business case development, vendor landscape assessments, and executive-level presentations and workshops
• Collaborate with other consultants on the team to bring a consistent, credible point of view to clients across engagements

What We're Looking For

Experience

• Significant experience gained either inside an airline's commercial, distribution, revenue management, or IT organization working on retailing/distribution transformation, or inside a MAR- focused IT vendor (e.g., PSS, Offer/Order management, NDC aggregators or platforms) in a role facing into airline customers
• A track record of being close to real MAR programs — not just familiar with the concepts, but having lived through the realities of sequencing, dependencies, and organizational change
• Comfortable operating at a strategic/advisory level, not a detailed requirements-authoring level

Skills & Attributes

• Strong grasp of the MAR landscape: Offer/Order management, NDC, dynamic pricing/bundling, retailing platforms, and the major vendors and standards involved
• Genuine, considered views on Agentic AI's likely impact on MAR strategy and vendor roadmaps — able to separate signal from hype
• Excellent judgment on pacing and prioritization; able to say “not yet” or “not that way” to a client persuasively and diplomatically
• Strong communication and executive presence; comfortable advising senior airline stakeholders
• Consulting mindset: structured thinking, clear written and verbal communication, comfort with ambiguity

Nice to Have

• Prior consulting experience
• Experience across multiple airline business models (LCC, network/full-service, hybrid)
• A network within the MAR vendor and airline distribution community

Why Join Us

We are a highly experienced and diverse team of culturally aware consultants based in the heart of Europe. Our “truthful, not neutral” pro-airline stance sets us apart from consultants working on both sides of the table. At Oystin, we are on the airlines’ team. Only. Always.