Group bookings from business travelers and tourists are among the primary sources of income for an airline.
What happens if there is an unexpected disruption to your services—a cancellation or a delay—and you leave your passengers confused in the lobby?
The answer is quite straightforward. Apart from the deluge of negative publicity on social media, you also lose a ton of money by losing your valued customers to your competition.
This may even have happened to your airline, and you might be in the process of identifying a group booking solution that can help pacify the passengers with top-notch support and handle their rebooking/cancellation requests.
It is near impossible to avoid disruptions to flights, especially with the uncertainty of covid-19 hanging over major travel destinations. But it is quite possible to manage disruptions effectively and ensure your passengers don’t leave you for your competitors.
But this is easier said than done.
Why traditional methods of dealing with group booking disruptions don’t work
Even during the peak of the pandemic in 2020, around 1.8 billion people had taken to the skies for various reasons. As the pandemic subsides, the number of people flying will only go up, so airlines need to find a way to tackle the following disadvantages of using legacy methods to handle disruptions to group bookings.
- The time-consuming nature of manually informing everyone in the group about the disruption.
- The near impossibility of dealing with support requests from multiple channels.
- Chaotic process of manually rebooking or canceling flights for everyone in the group.
Delight passengers with automated solutions
Using the right group booking solution, passengers can be personally notified of disruptions in real-time, provided with support and the ability to cancel/ rebook flights on their own, and allowed to get instant refunds if they need it.
A solution like GroupRM will do these and much more to boost the customer experience:
- Timely notification of flight cancellations or delays through the channel of choice (email, SMS, etc.)
- Automatic rescheduling/ cancellation option for passengers through a self-service portal
- 24X7 support in multiple languages
For the airline, an automated group booking solution can:
Ensure that no passenger is left behind
During a disruption, when passengers get automatically notified, some may quickly navigate to the self-service portal and rebook or cancel their flights while others may be unaware or unresponsive. GroupRM allows you to cater to both by providing the first type of passenger with a self-service portal and freeing up the time of your customer support agents so that they can personally contact the unresponsive ones.
When there is a disruption, there will certainly be chaos. With the help of an automated solution, you can effortlessly reassign group booking passengers to different flights with low occupancy, free up overbooked flights, and consequently bolster profits. The best part is that this can be done while delighting customers with quick service.
Bring down the number of support staff needed
Group bookings tend to be filled with businessmen or travelers who are anxious to reach their destination on time. Any disruption in the schedule can cause them to jam up your support lines with questions and rebook/ cancel requests. Using our AI-powered solution, you can handle high-volume days with ease even if you have a lean support team.
Apart from the powerful chatbots, you can also deploy a comprehensive knowledge base for passengers to get answers during a disruption without overwhelming your support agents.
Conclusion
Undoubtedly, automation is the way to go to effectively deal with the fallout from cancellations or delays to group bookings. Investing a small sum in a solution like GroupRM can go a long way in alleviating passenger frustration during disruption and preventing them from going to your competitors. See for yourself the transformative power of GroupRM with a demo.
