Personalization has been used with great success at companies such as Amazon, Netflix and Pandora. According to eMarketer, almost half of online retailers found that personalization increased revenue in excess of 10%. Unfortunately, customization is also an area where the airline industry has been both leading and lagging behind. A leader with the launch of innovative loyalty programs in the 1980s, but behind in the effective use of it beyond that.

So, how can modern targeting techniques help in the airline industry, beyond what loyalty and profiles have already delivered? Targeting can be used to capture what customers really want and tailor the offer based on their needs. The offer can be generated and optimized using revenue management techniques coupled with data from the different traveler groups or clusters.

The modern airline industry has been undergoing a fundamental shift in how it views its own product and how best to interact with its customers. Is the air travel product being sold to the customer as a single unified offering, or is it a catalog of pieces that the customer can pick from?

Carriers such as EasyJet, Ryanair, Frontier and AirAsia have perfected a model where the air travel experience is broken down into multiple products that are purchased separately. The success of this model has caused larger carriers to adopt this concept to their own air travel product in the form of separate purchases for on-board meals, baggage, priority boarding and many other services. However, breaking the air travel product into multiple pieces is a challenge to many existing airline systems, and has required the addition of new systems and processes.

Most airlines have approached the sale of these “ancillary” products through the deployment of merchandizing catalog systems, which sit apart from the traditional airline pricing and revenue management systems. Sales of ancillaries traditionally take place after the customer has selected a fare, with little coordination between the two.

With ancillary sales becoming a major part of airline revenue (and profitability) is this really the right approach? Revenue management systems should seek to integrate both bundled and forecasted future ancillary sales, with the base fare. Taking the complete customer purchase into consideration will optimize its full value.

Download a copy of our latest report, A spotlight on Total Offer Optimization: Fast forward to customer centric revenue management, for more.

source : https://tinyurl.com/yae7o3dg

So, I used Watson Analytics and Watson Analytics for Social media to analyze delay data and what I learned surprised me. Learn more about how smart data discovery can lead you to insights that impact the world and your business.

This month on #PaxEx TV, we discuss why United Airlines has become a case study in how not to handle a crisis, and why passengers will demand a better United going forward . We also learn how cabin lighting can affect passenger perception, and we receive a Tasmania airline report from our correspondent down under, John Walton.

Williams stated: “Our vision for the future is collaborating with airlines in delivering our version of the supplier managed marketplace to travellers worldwide.

“We want to bring airline products on our site as close to the direct experience as possible, with carriers controlling their products and brand while benefitting from our traffic, and audience, across a range of devices.

“This means offering a form of airline store-front.

“For travellers, the experience on Skyscanner is then virtually indistinguishable from the experience on airline.com – yet has the advantage of being available on desktop, app or any device.

“Airlines must have the opportunity to stand out in the next generation of distribution, particularly as travellers increasingly expect to be able to transact on smaller screen sizes with shorter purchasing journeys which offer a seamless booking process.”

If you want to see into the future, you have to “connect” with the people who will be shaping it. And that’s exactly what Amadeus and Accenture did in partnership at the recent Millennial 20/20 North America summit in New York City.

As businesses of all sizes are faced with increasing complexity and evolving consumer preferences, they must embrace innovation, disruption and technology as key to their future. Millennial 20/20 brings established brands and startups together for summits held around the world to explore the future of next-generation commerce from the perspective of the digitally savvy consumer. The hundreds of attendees at the New York event gained insight from multiple speakers, panels and experiential exhibitions across industry specific tracks from travel and food to fitness and fashion.

Working in collaboration as part of the Accenture Amadeus alliance, the two companies showcased the future of the traveler experience and airline industry. The alliance was established to help lead airlines through the digital transformation of the marketplace, from evolving the way they do business to developing breakthrough solutions to improve the traveler experience.  Accenture and Amadeus partnered to present “Innovation²: The Future of Travel,” an interactive exhibit bringing the future vision of air travel to life by revealing how advances in technology, analytics and automation will power tomorrow’s flight experience.

Concepts revolved around key areas such as airlines as the next generation retailer, the unique traveler’s experience, rethinking airline operations and how airlines are reinventing themselves. Attendees – including numerous airlines from around the world – got a hands-on look at experimental air travel innovation in action: from inspirational travel search and shopping technology, to how blockchain can address lost luggage, disruption management chat bots, or even how holograms might transform aircraft maintenance training.

During a mainstage panel, “Phoenix Rising – How are Airlines going to be disrupted?” Amadeus experts and others discussed how airlines are looking to innovative approaches and technologies to manage rising customer expectations and digital disruption.

And what’s a summit about the future and innovation without startups. The Millennial 20/20 Startups Street presented a forum for travel-focused entrepreneurs to network, pitch their vision and advance their business.

One only has to look at Millennial 20/20 to know that no matter how the future actually manifests itself, what is clear is that the airline industry is poised for end-to-end innovation, from traveler experience to operations.  And working in tandem with the right technology and partners in the travel industry anything – and everything – is possible.

source : https://tinyurl.com/jromaho

On the heels of CES’ tech takeover of Las Vegas, Lufthansa Airlines and its subsidiaries yesterday converged at Frankfurt Airport, transforming the hub into a forum on digital aviation.

“I think, by now, we all agree that we live in a digital world,” said chairman and CEO Carsten Spohr, who lauded the airline’s reputation for being “the most digital airline.” The goal for 2017, Spohr says, is to become “the most digital aviation group.”

Digital innovations on display included Avegant Glyph headsets, an artificial intelligence-driven chatbot named Mildred and one of five Inmarsat GX radome-equipped Airbus A319s, ready for take off. Lufthansa’s FlyNet Internet service, powered by Inmarsat Ka-band satellite connectivity, is now online and will be available to customers in three service packages: FlyNet Message, FlyNet Surf and FlyNet Stream. Delegates from the press tested streaming capacity on the service’s inaugural flight, watching a live ground-to-air teleconference.

With four days downtime required for radome installation by Lufthansa Technik on each aircraft, Lufthansa aims to have 10 A320s equipped by the end of the first quarter and 100 aircraft by spring, completing the full-fleet roll out in roughly 15 months. Austrian Airlines has also launched its service, and will have 31 aircraft equipped by April this year, while Eurowings plans to begin installation early spring and equip its 69 aircraft by end of summer.

But for Spohr, who shyly admits preferring to disconnect while he’s flying, passenger connectivity is just a piece of Lufthansa’s sweeping digital strategy. “When we think about marketing, it truly has changed from communication only in non-digital environments to being present in a digital world via various channels,” he says, adding that the airline’s head of Marketing now spends at least 50 percent of his time devoted to cultivating the airline’s digital presence.

Lufthansa Group’s SMILE program, which takes its name from the cheerful acronym for “Surpass My Individual Lufthansa Experience,” focuses on using customer data to provide personalized marketing and services. “We’re using a multitude of different customer data points, and we’re using a lot of market research, which we’ve always done, but we’re matching that very deeply with ethnographic research,” explains David Doyle, SMILE’s program director.

“We don’t believe that digitalization will create job losses.” — Carsten Spohr, Lufthansa

A recent SMILE initiative involved deploying 200 Bluetooth beacons at Munich Airport that can read digital boarding pass data as travelers pass by, and send offers for lounge access, via Lufthansa’s app, to those who have more than 65 minutes before departure.

Spohr affirms that the group’s digital ambitions will not threaten jobs, adding that the group will add 3,000 personnel over 2017, including 2,200 flight attendant positions. “It’s not either or,” he says. “We don’t believe that digitalization will create job losses, but rather we believe that it will create additional jobs because it will make Lufthansa bigger and more successful.”

source: http://tinyurl.com/z96e2e8

LCCs and hybrids are changing the rules of the game for the whole airline industry with a growing shift towards hybridization, as John Dabkowski explained in his post last Friday.

Amadeus works with more than 90 LCC and hybrid partners. This means an impressive 80% of the total global LCC and hybrid seats are available in our system today. These carriers are actively pursuing an omni-channel approach to secure future growth, while retaining their low-cost models.

By adding travel agency distribution to the mix, LCCs and hybrids can focus on new strategies and models to build on the success and momentum they’ve experienced over the last decade. For example, some LCCs are seeking new opportunities in long distance routes, either as feeder flights to full service carrier routes or by partnering with other LCCs.

At World Low Cost Airlines Congress last week, it was interesting to hear from airline C-Level speakers, like Carolyn McCall, CEO of easyJet, and IAG’s Willie Walsh reference this growing trend, with Walsh citing the example of Aer Lingus and JetBlue.

There are other strategies, too. Many LCCs are expanding to new routes and markets, reaching entirely new traveller audiences and broadening their offer to existing customers. However, this brings its own challenges. As Jayne Hrdlicka, CEO of Jetstar Group, explained at the Congress, there’s often a need to adjust to local market conditions and adopt an approach to marketing that is tailored to the new traveller audience – areas in which our expertise and local teams provide crucial value.

Airlines are, of course, also adopting omni-channel strategies to access new customer segments such as high-yield business travellers. We’ve been supporting LCCs and hybrids to reach new customers and new markets for many years, giving LCCs access to the world’s largest agency network, including more than 11,000 corporations in 90 markets. Today, we are working with these carriers to help them build non-ticket revenue and reinforce loyalty through an improved customer experience.

As LCCs and hybrids put new strategies in place and drive the industry forward, we’re there with them, providing the technology and expertise to deliver concrete results:

• Sustained booking growth, with 71% growth in LCC bookings in Amadeus over the last four years and 16% LCC and hybrid year-on-year booking growth in H1 2016
• 19% of LCC bookings in Amadeus are interline or codeshare today
• LCCs in Amadeus are achieving up to 60% higher yield than direct, and seeing 80% attachment rates for ancillary services

With a joint offer of Amadeus and Navitaire solutions and services, we’re uniquely positioned to support hybridisation and stimulate further expansion for carriers of all business models. As the industry evolves, we are evolving with it and working in new and profitable ways with our partners to explore and seize new opportunities.

source : http://tinyurl.com/zua84gl