6 Aspects Of Automated Airline Group Bookings You Might Not Know

6 Aspects Of Automated Airline Group Bookings You Might Not Know

In the dawning age of AI, we wake up to many AI products and automation that promise to revolutionize the industry. The airline industry is not an exception, almost every department knows the updates, but they aren’t aware to what extent these advancements can benefit their operations. An automated airline group booking tool can impressively reduce the time taken to generate a group quote from 2 to 5 business working days to 30 mins

It reduces the number of group revenue managers and group sales desks working to handle the airline group bookings. From 15 employees working on a task to 2-3 people finishing the same workload within hours. This is when you have an end-to-end system where you will have all the real-time data from handling booking requests to an AI-intelligent dashboard.

The proven capabilities are much greater where it can even optimize revenue loss, leakages, and loss in conversion. 
Let’s dive into what you might not know about automated airline group traffic management.

1. Detailed Customer Segmentation

In manual or partially automated systems, the airlines cannot classify their customer segments when their primary communication is only by emails and calls. With ranges of group passengers, typically there are corporate, leisure, government employees, educational, sports, events, religious, tour operators, affinity groups, etc. Everything will be stored in the system and offer real-time insights.

It has the capacity to offer personalized products and make informed decisions for all the tasks from group booking requests to confirmation.

2. Streamlined Payment Installations

It is a full-time, long, and tedious process to track and manage the payments for the group quotations. It gets even more complicated when airlines choose to charge pre-payment for booking reservations or pay in installments. With an automation system, the limits of the global setup can be defined by the admin into 3 types – fare validity, payment validity, and customer validity.

This enhances the overall group booking experience allowing the customer to choose your airlines as it feels more convenient.

3. Self-Sufficient Portal

It is an advanced, intuitive, and self-sufficient system that handles end-to-end group revenue management, from booking requests to confirmation. It is a digital bridge streamlining a clear flow from customers to airline executives. Although some airlines may already have an airline group traffic management system, the value of the software automation system is determined by how advanced the front-end and back-end act to support the airline. 

The advanced features are like a spectrum of benefits, from receiving direct sales to having the technical capability to store 10 years of historical data at the backend of all the group bookings.

4. Efficient Group Fare Configuration

As group passengers will be automatically filtered when they raise a quote, airlines can easily apply the fare configuration. Administrators or group revenue managers can easily set up a fare matrix for various quote types, customers, date/time parameters, discount structures, and more within a matter of hours. This is 10x harder in manual systems where the staff has to apply the terms manually. 

Automating this process streamlines operations and reduces the potential for errors or inconsistencies.

5. Smooth Quote Negotiation

Airline group quotes typically are open to negotiation if the value of a travel agency is deemed profitable in the long run. The process of negotiation is mostly via emails and calls, where the staff has to check back and forth with a quote. In all truth, the capabilities of an airline revenue manager are maximized with all the real-time data available. 

In an automated system, all necessary information such as historical data, market trends, and other factors impacting pricing decisions are consolidated. This not only saves time but also improves the accuracy of negotiated quotes.

6. AI-Driven Dashboard and Analytics

With the absence of real-time reports, the revenue managers may calculate a group quote that fits the best of their knowledge. By providing airline revenue managers with a 360-degree view of real-time data, they can make informed pricing decisions that have a direct impact on the airline’s revenue.

Adopt GroupRM – A Market-Leading Airline Group Booking Tool

By reducing the turnaround time of group booking quotes from days to mere minutes, this solution diminishes the need for a large workforce, thereby simplifying the overall booking experience. GroupRM is an advanced airline group booking tool that can help revenue managers efficiently increase airline revenue with informed decision-making. 

Schedule a demo with us to know more about our airline revenue management specialized for the group booking system.

How Agency Wallets Can Help Airlines Handle Payments Flexibly

How Agency Wallets Can Help Airlines Handle Payments Flexibly?

Agency wallets are a gateway to many untouched revenue opportunities for airlines. Airlines are returning to profitability in 2023, but the growth percentage is steep. According to travel experts, this market gap can be fixed by optimizing the revenue opportunities, especially with their tied-up travel agencies.

Why?

Travel agencies contribute almost 40% of the overall profit from travel agencies and 60% of the revenue from leisure and corporate travelers. Travel agencies serving different faces, cultures, and people, revenue opportunities, and payment preferences are expanded. With the world moving towards a decentralized payment system, trying to bundle it with centralized payments will result in missed revenue opportunities, especially with airlines.

An agency wallet is a flexible virtual payment option that stores and handles multi-currency payments worldwide.

What challenges are faced by travel agencies without an agency wallet?

  • They cannot initiate a single payment for ad hoc and group bookings which takes a lot of manual effort and time from the revenue team
  • Ability to handle and offer different types of customer needs namely, group travelers, corporate/business travelers, and leisure travelers
  • Providing payment flexibility in dealing with holiday management, booking prepayments, and payment installments
  • Determining the ways to expand the revenue opportunities for each customer

What challenges are faced by airlines without an agency wallet?

  • Disconnected payment environment, user journeys, and revenue systems leading to revenue loss and leakages
  • No internal flexibility to strategize and streamline the payment system for travel agencies, corporate managers, and general customers
  • Finding ways to fully utilize the back-office operations
  • Less progression, innovation, and providing various payment options

What are the benefits travel agencies will get when they use agency wallets?

Travel agencies will be most benefited from agency wallets due to the nature of their business as they are the main source of revenue for the airlines through group bookings, tourism, corporate travels, and leisure travels.

Let’s see the top 5 benefits that travel agencies get to experience when they use agency wallets,

● Multiple payments at the same time

Travel agencies cannot pay for their ad hoc and group bookings at the same time. In legacy systems, everything is handled via email, calls, and messaging with continuous follow-ups. Agency wallets have the flexible functionality to initiate many consecutive payments.

● Smooth payment modes

Wallets offer instant payments, refunds, cancellation options, coupon codes, and dynamic travel payments. Unlike bank operations which may take 3-7 business days to handle payments, agency wallets have no delays and can offer instant refunds wherever necessary.

 Integrations with multiple booking engines

Airlines will have the flexibility to connect with multiple booking engines without any hindrance in reconciling and payment issues. This will contribute a lot to the airline’s growth due to the extended revenue opportunities with multiple booking engines.

● Easier calculations for the accounting team

There is complete transparency in handling business payments from public travelers to travel agencies to corporate travelers. All the department managers can monitor and evaluate which product or service is the most profitable to the airline and how to leverage it.

● Great customer experience

Seamless payment options is a great advantage any industry can provide for its customers. Travel agencies can operate better with agency wallets featured with many new-age payment modes making them loyal and convenient to choose your airlines.

How can airlines serve better with an agency wallet?

● Negotiate better deals with travel agencies

 Agency wallets make travel agencies bring consistent business opportunities. Airlines could negotiate better deals with travel agencies by offering commissions or booking deals and payments done through agency wallets.

● Serve beyond satisfactory customer service

Travel agencies have a multitude of internal processes to deliver the best experiences to their travelers. Agency wallets help them reduce the time spent to initiate, and manage the payments allowing the travel agencies to get exceptional customer service.

 Straightened out internal processes

There might be some disconnect with the travelers as wallets are already available in a lot of other industries. A wallet can straighten the payment process from external sources to internal sources. Airlines can use agency wallets to properly strategize and straighten the internal process.

● Stakeholder, airline system and agreements alignment

Internal agreements or business flow might not have official documentation on agency wallets. Most airlines wouldn’t consider adding wallets as a part of their agreement, marketing, or growth plan. But that could change if wallets are properly utilized.

Conclusion

Payment innovation is a smart step to increase the bottom line of airline operations. We provide an agency wallet as a separate enhancer tool that serves as a one-point payment solution secured with trustworthy and safe policies benefiting the travel agencies who go with group bookings.

GroupRM provides a 360° group booking revenue management system assuring 23% of revenue growth from group booking.

Check-In Counter of An Airline - A Blog Banner for the Future of Customer Segmentation

Customer Segmented Distribution – The Future Of Airline Distribution

For airlines around the world, developing a comprehensive, 360-degree view of their customers is vital. As the travel industry limps back to normal after a couple of years of travel curbs, airlines will benefit massively if they can figure out what triggers an individual’s purchasing decisions. 

To do this, and turn customers into assets, airlines need to create and cater to segments based on value, behavior, and needs. 

Enhancing the travel experience through segmentation 

For everyone from corporate customers to retail customers to large packs of tourists, airlines can apply segmentation to provide optimal fares, offers, and ancillaries. The segmentation can be based on anything; flying frequency, demographics, etc. are all considerations.

But how does such segmentation help airlines to the extent that it is embraced as the future of airline distribution?

Maximizing the revenue from retail customers

Retail customers are generally low yield fliers but viewing them as a segment with specific needs will go a long way in maximizing the returns from each seat. The key is ancillaries, such as food options, drinks, covid insurance, etc. 

Within retail customers, you can have segments based on paying capabilities, which is an approach that has been successful for Delta Airlines and many others. Notably, Delta managed to offer enhanced personalization with the help of products, such as Delta’s Economy Plus, which targets affluent couples.

To optimize its revenue, the airline tailored its NDC content, pricing, and retailing channel based on the requirements of the target group.

Making the most out of corporate travel

Generally, corporate customers don’t mind surge fees for late bookings, and they will also prefer to fly with comforts, such as priority boarding, checked bags, onboard meals, etc. Some airlines even provide Wi-Fi and business lounges for this passenger segment. 

With highly granular segmentation and insights from customer behavior, airlines can further provide business travelers with stellar customer service. For instance, when the airline knows that someone is a business passenger, they can offer easy flight cancellations, seat upgrades, and notifications during disruptions, which will go a long way in bolstering customer retention. 

Taking advantage of group bookings

Tourists, religious pilgrims, corporate group bookings, and mass requests from travel agents can all be treated as different segments that airlines can take advantage of with personalized pricing and product offers.

Flights like Malaysian Airlines have dedicated Hajj trips with flights that serve only specific meals that are consistent with the occasion, have prayers onboard at the prescribed times, etc. This has been a huge revenue generator for the airline. 

Further, travel agents may look for discounts in exchange for a large number of ticket bookings that will come in consistently every month. Airlines can make use of demand forecasting and seasonal tourism data to provide optimal pricing for them.

Apart from this, companies that have employees traveling in large numbers can be served with loyalty programs, access to premium business lounges, etc. 

A surprisingly underrated passenger segment 

In many countries, governments mandate their employees to only travel on their national carrier. This can be a lucrative segment for airlines if they can provide the government employees with a dedicated portal for bookings, cancellations, and unlocking rewards for flying frequently. 

NDC-enabled merchandizing 

As NDC adoption takes off, airlines can also segment customers based on shopping data and customer intent. Enhancing the NDC-shopping experience will go a long way in helping airlines enhance the conversion rate and customer experience. Moreover, this allows the airline to keep customer needs at the center while designing future products, bundling fares, and making marketing decisions.  

Conclusion 

Not all passengers are the same. As air travel becomes increasingly common, airlines need to figure out how to effectively cater to nearly 3 billion passengers from different backgrounds. With customer analytics, airlines can successfully implement value-based segmentation and consequently boost profits.  If you are looking for a solution that can handle customer segmentation for you and provide you with actionable insights on how to cater to them for optimal revenue, reach us atmarketing@infinitisoftware.net 

Passengers in the Lounge That Illustrates How Airlines Can Give Travel Experiences with GroupRM

How Can Airlines Move Up The Value Chain And Provide Travel Experiences?

Airlines are constantly looking for new revenue streams that win them loyal passengers. Given how the coronavirus pandemic has devastated the travel sector, it has become even more important for airlines to look beyond ticket sales to run profitably.

Increasingly, airlines have found that the modern traveler—with dozens of choices to pick from—prefers an all-around satisfactory travel experience rather than a few customizations. 

This reality means that airlines need to quickly adapt, moving up the value chain to provide wholesome travel experiences that passengers can cherish for a lifetime.

Here are just a few ways of ensuring that.

Personalizing flights

Nearly nothing enhances a passenger’s experiences on a flight than a hot meal, snack, or drink served by a friendly member of the flight crew.

Airlines like Austrian Airlines and Alaska Airlines allow passengers to order food on their smartphone while others, such as Virgin America, Norwegian, Azul, etc. have kicked things up a notch by letting passengers order drinks and food through the in-flight entertainment system.

Airlines can further provide business travelers with the option of accessing Wi-Fi and business lounges, thanks to the New Distribution Capability that allows airlines to sell using rich data. For tourists and other retail customers, airlines can provide on-demand video options at the push of a button, which will serve to enhance the travel experience.

With airline chatbots, you now even have the option of making the process of booking delightful. Based on past booking and the conversation up to a point, you can have AI-powered chatbots providing recommendations that resonate with the passenger.

Superior loyalty benefits

Proving loyalty benefits can be a great way to boost corporate bookings and even retail ticket sales. You can tap into the goldmine of data that you have at your disposal and make sure that loyal passengers have all their needs attended to without even having to ask.

Customization is key here; you need to make sure that you provide the right incentive to the right person who is most likely to appreciate the entertainment, lodging, food, or transport offers you provide them with.

Travel packages that resonate with the target audience

If your airline provides tours to religious sites, such as the Holy Land, Hajj, etc., or even generally cater to tourists, it would be a great idea to partner with service provides like hotels and tour operators. Doing this will ensure that airlines can generate revenue from the whole trip rather than only selling tickets.

Most importantly, it will make life easier for passengers, as they can have their entire trip’s needs met in one place.

Given that layovers can be frustrating, airlines also can provide passengers with the ability to pre-order food.

Providing this level of personalization and seamless travel experience will undoubtedly lead to passengers choosing your airline the next time they decide to fly.

Localized services

Even when passengers have left the airport, airlines have the opportunity of serving them with GPS-enabled apps that can point the person to local hotels, car rentals, etc. operated by partners.

Also, based on where the person is located, airlines can provide them with relevant offers, promotions, and rewards.

Offering this level of service can go a long way in leaving a lasting impression on the mind of the passenger, making your airline their first choice when they want to travel.

The use of beacons

Beacons, which are portable and wireless devices installed at airports, have great potential for enhancing the passenger experience. They essentially interact with nearby mobile devices to provide passengers with personalized welcome messages, flight confirmation information, and also details regarding the gate to head to.

Conclusion 

For emerging out of the pandemic in good shape, airlines need to focus incessantly on making air travel a memorable experience. As a result, they need to lose the ticket seller mentality and move even beyond traditional ancillary products and sell more experience-oriented products based on user behavior.  

An Airplane Surrounded by 5 Sales Component Pictures that represents the Airline's Ancillary Sales

What Ancillaries Should The Airlines Focus On In The Post Covid Era?

Long before covid, airlines—especially the budget carriers— have been boosting their operating margins with ancillary revenue. Ancillaries, which are non-ticket sources of revenue for airlines, brought in 109.5 billion U.S. dollars in 2019 alone.

Since the pandemic has made passengers pickier—they expect personalization and higher safety standards—and airlines need a massive boost in revenue to recover from the devastation caused by international travel restrictions, ancillaries are expected to lead the way.

Choosing the right ancillaries to focus on

Emerging from the pandemic, customers have a variety of concerns they need resolved before they can trust air travel again. A few of them are: 

  • Increased safety measures
  • Flexibility in pricing
  • Modular offers for corporates

Meeting these should be an airline’s primary focus if they want to rekindle passenger confidence in flying and provide a seamless journey for their customers. This is because customer behavior has seen a massive shift due to social distancing requirements, fears of infection, the economic downturn, and the shift towards online buying. 

The way out of the pandemic—personalizing the passenger experience

To stay relevant and gain increased customer loyalty, airlines need to focus on personalization the way Netflix and Amazon have been able to, by moving from a product-focused approach to a customer-focused one.   

Here are a few of the ancillaries that you can offer passengers in light of the pandemic and your efforts to fill more seats with high-yield passengers. 

Covid related health measures

Passenger confidence will be boosted if you take the initiative to offer ancillaries, such as travel insurance and baggage wrapping and immune boosting kits to protect from infections. Ensure that the insurance is affordable and comprehensive, covering aspects like screening, telemedicine, treatment, and quarantine costs.  

Also, you can take a cue from a variety of tour operators who are offering tours in Russia with a twist—you will be given the vaccine on arrival. 

Moreover, some airlines are allowing passengers to book seats or whole rows near them to ensure social distancing. This can be quite lucrative if airlines are able to automate the booking process and make sure those seats are blocked from being booked by others.

Crucially, passengers also need to be offered the ability to cancel without any penalty if they contract covid.

Modular bundles for business travelers 

Identifying flights or timings with more business travelers and offering something as simple as Wi-Fi will do wonders for your bottom line. Also, offering business-class lounges, extra legroom, transport facilities in their destination, etc. for corporate travelers can significantly boost ancillary revenue.  

To attract more corporate clients, airlines can also begin offering tickets that offer changeability of the seat, refundability, and easy upgrades. 

Frequent flier rewards 

Airlines can present passengers with the opportunity to be part of a rewards program that benefits the fliers every time they use the services of the airline. Seeing rewards accumulate will serve as an impetus for many to become loyal to the brand.  

Further, the airline can make money selling loyalty points to credit card companies who pass it on to their premium customers. These customers go on to become patrons of the airline.  

Tour packages

Tourists and religious pilgrims will form a substantial part of airline revenue for the next few months, given the reluctance of many business travelers to begin corporate travel because of factors, such as remote work.

 So, catering to the tourists with fully packaged trips to their dream destination, including car rentals, hotels, and food, will serve to delight your passengers and add to the bottom-line as well. It is worth noting that airlines can profit from offering relaxation or wellbeing-themed tours because of the effect that the pandemic has had on people’s minds and bodies.  

Conclusion 

Airlines need to come up with innovative, personalized products through dynamic bundles across all touchpoints and channels. Doing so will go a long way in giving the airline a competitive advantage amidst these turbulent times.  \

If you want help with offering customer-centric ancillaries to optimize your revenue and strengthen recovery, don’t hesitate to reach us at  marketing@infinitisoftware.net 

How-airlines-can-shift-to-a-travel-marketplace

Can Airlines Move Up The Value Chain And Provide A Fully Packaged Hajj Pilgrimage?

Umrah and Hajj pilgrimages are both rapidly growing markets. Since these are trips undertaken by millions of devout pilgrims every year in the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, catering to them has become a highly competitive industry.  

Consequently, every year, airlines servicing these areas are in a mad rush to book the most passengers in collaboration with large travel agencies. 

Unfortunately, this has turned into an arrangement with two significant losers—the religious pilgrim and the airline. 

Why? 

The travel agents, realizing that these trips are extremely important to the faithful, leave no stone unturned in extracting the maximum amount of money possible from the pilgrims.  

Given that the price of tickets only accounts for around 20 or so percent of the pilgrimages’ cost, airlines do not make much money off the trips. 

Is it possible for airlines to rectify this issue and end up making more money while also delighting their passengers? 

The answer is yes, and the way to achieve this is simpler than you would imagine. 

Read on to find out how you too can jump on the bandwagon of offering fully packaged Hajj and Umrah pilgrimages and bring in tons of ancillary revenue that you are currently leaving on the table. 

Taking your customer experience to the skies 

One of the main customer pain points when planning a Hajj or Umrah pilgrimage is that they do not know much about travel and accommodation in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. As a result, they must search extensively for travel agents who will plan the whole trip for them. A major issue here is that the prices are exorbitant, and the customer is put in a position where they must suffer a large financial burden.  

Here, there is a massive opportunity in creating a pilgrim-centric service for travelers to Hajj and Umrah. As an airline, you can go beyond picking up and dropping passengers and provide them with an all-inclusive religious pilgrimage that they will cherish for the rest of their life.

Now, how do you go about doing this, and is stellar customer experience the only benefit?  

Airlines can go about doing this by becoming a travel marketplace, an “Amazon of travel” so to speak, which is a platform for various travel agents and other vendors to provide services for which you also get a commission.  

Apart from this, you can strike deals with travel agents to ensure that only your flights are offered as part of their tour packages.  

You can also offer the following and even more to customers while making substantial amounts of ancillary revenue along with the flights they book.  

  • Cars for hire 
  • Hotel bookings  
  • Travel health insurance 
  • Covid testing and support.
  • Flight, bus, and even train tickets. 

For passengers, this will be a godsend because competition among the travel agents listing on the airline’s portal will bring down prices for the travel package. Meanwhile, you can ensure that your flights never fly with empty seats, and rest assured that you are making the maximum amount of money possible from each passenger’s trip. 

Conclusion 

Airlines will benefit massively by moving up the value chain and providing a fully packaged Hajj and Umrah pilgrimage. The opportunity to scale operations is massive; nations, such as Malaysia and Egypt have largely underserved markets that will welcome the ability to complete their religious duties cost-effectively.  

Transitioning to such a travel marketplace model does not have to be complicated at all. Reach us at marketing@infinitisoftware.net to know how we can equip you with travel marketplace capabilities just as the pandemic subsides and demand begins to soar for pilgrimages.

Should-airlines-create-a-specialized

Should Airlines Create A Specialized Online Storefront For Government Travelers?

A government employee frantically trying to book flight tickets for official business runs into a variety of issues.  

Firstly, he cannot book tickets directly from the website of the country’s national carrier. Picking another carrier is also out of the question due to government mandates that their employees must only use the national carrier. He must rely on GDS and travel agents, who have no incentive for providing discounted flights.

There is also the possibility that tickets would have been sold out. Moreover, dependance on travel agents goes against the efforts by airlines to bring down their distribution costs using initiatives, such as NDC.

If this were a one-off situation, it could have been easily fixed. But unfortunately, this chaos and inconvenience, coupled with high commissions, is a reality across the globe, and it affects countless employees, departments, and entire governments as well.  

Speaking of the government, they are also in a bind due to this situation given that there are all kinds of fraud and policy violations being committed with the discounts reserved exclusively for government employees.  

How is this mess to be untangled? When the issue is viewed in its entirety, it seems to be impossible to fix. But what if we told you that there is a straightforward solution? 

Infiniti’s GOM portal—a secure and hassle-free booking platform for government business travelers

 After intense brainstorming, we have come up with the perfect solution— custom online storefronts for flight booking that airlines can create to attract government employees and help them bypass travel agents and GDS.

For such a system the benefits are unparalleled. Here are a few of the benefits that users of the solution have experienced. 

  • The travel expense has come down drastically. 
  • What is more, the process of getting approval for the trip and securing tickets has become seamless.  
  • Besides, government departments have reported that policy compliance has gone up substantially.  
  • Notably, government employees can actively track the status of their bookings. 
  • There is also the option of making payments or raising an invoice directly to the government. Without the hassle of going through the reimbursement process, employees can invoice their government for the various business expenses they have incurred.
  • Given how each airline can assign specific teams to deal with government agencies, approvals for employee requests are done much faster. 
  • Advanced analytics also provides the agencies with detailed insights on employee habits and whether they are complying with department policy. 
  • Bypassing travel agents and GDS further ensures that the airline gets to boost its bottom line and that the passenger pays lower ticket costs.  
  • Airlines also can accurately monitor how well ticket sales are going and optimize revenue by leveraging this information. 

Conclusion

Infiniti’s GOM portal can make the difference between you saving money while catering to government employees and you missing out on major revenue gains due to commissions to travel agents. Besides, it is the surefire way to gain a customer base that consistently uses your service and is bankrolled by governments with infinite spending potential.

Reach us at marketing@infinitisoftware.net to learn more about how our custom GOM portal can benefit you. 

Should-Airlines-Move

Should Airlines Move From Being An Air Transport Service Provider To Managing A Travel Marketplace?

Just as a customer is booking a flight on your website, he gets an SMS. 

It is from your competitor, informing your potential passenger that he can save a ton of money by clicking on the link before it expires in 10 minutes. 

Without a moment of hesitation, your customer will click away, which means you have lost him forever. Your customer finishes his booking with another airline, confident that he has saved money, and proceeds to look for other services he may need during his trip. Depending on the trip your customer is taking, the ancillaries could be anything from hotels to cars to buses to food.

Is it possible to retain the customer with a discount and earn extra revenue by selling a bunch of relevant ancillaries? 

What if there was a way to even delight customers who come looking for information on flights by offering them exciting and affordable travel packages along with the flight? 

The good news is that it is perfectly possible.

The solution?

Transitioning from an air transport service provider to a travel marketplace.  

Why being an air transport service provider is insufficient

 Historically, all an airline has done is provide customers with flights and make money off ticket sales. The extra income was mainly generated through the sales of business class tickets, food, and other services that only extended to the period when the passenger was flying.  

Largely, this has led to dwindling returns for airlines.  

Some of the key reasons include intense competition, fluctuating fuel prices, and the seasonal nature of the business. With the COVID-19 pandemic raging all over the world, the ensuing lockdowns have further crippled the airline industry, leading to major losses. IATA estimates that in 2020 alone, the industry faced losses to the tune of $84 Billion.   

Given this scenario, there is enough reason for the airline sector to adopt newer strategies for optimizing revenue, such as shifting towards a travel marketplace model that is becoming increasingly popular.   

Pioneers of the ancillary sales landscape

Although this is happening slowly, there can be no doubt that airlines are teaming up with technology companies to develop their travel marketplaces that have become key drivers of their revenue.  

Ryanair, a Europe-based low-cost carrier, has been able to completely change its fortunes by embracing the concept of becoming a travel marketplace. Notably, in the period between 2016 and 2019, seat sale revenue increased by 15 % while ancillary revenue shot up by 86%. Owing to this, it would be fair to say that Ryanair’s growth and profitability have been powered by the sale of ancillaries. 

Ancillaries, in general, are thought to be extra charges applied to in-flight beverage and food, baggage, priority boarding, and airport check-ins, but Ryanair has managed to do so much more. 

Here are just a few of the ways the airline and other players in the industry make extra money by being a platform for various vendors. 

  • Car hires
  • Hotel reservations 
  • Bus and Rail tickets 
  • Covid testing and support
  • Travel medical consultation
  • Travel health insurance

Frankly, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Airlines can do a lot more to tap into the endless pool of travelers who are looking for flexible travel packages and attractive pricing options. 

Now that you see how much potential the concept of an online travel marketplace has, let us explore it in more detail with an emphasis on the must-have features and the consequent benefits.  

So, what is a travel marketplace?

In the airline sector, it refers to a place where companies offering travel-related services, such as hotels, cars, etc. can connect directly with customers. They can offer these services individually or as packages. In turn, the customers can compare all the offers and customize their trip to their liking.

What makes a good travel marketplace?

To be useful as a means of boosting revenue, travel marketplaces need to have the following features.  

  • Manage bookings for flights, hotels, and other services included in the package. 
  • Manage personalized pilgrimage packages for different markets 
  • Provide customers with exceptional support via a self-service portal 
  • Manage multiple vendors
  • Have inbuilt content management system to handle website content and blogs
  • Configure travel policies for each scenario
  • Handle third party payment gateways
  • Manage a multitude of users with different privileges 
  • Effective ancillary management
  • Enable customers to have a comprehensive overview of the product’s performance

How airlines can benefit

When a potential passenger lands on your site looking for flight information and finds providers for all his travel needs, he is much more likely to make a purchase, especially when it is easy to compare different vendors. Besides, customers who are not comfortable with too much choice can opt for the packages on offer. 

Another major benefit to the airline is the increase in revenue brought about by targeted promotions that can be carried out for various customer segments. When it comes to selling packages, the ability to directly distribute them will lead to a reduction in operating costs. Additionally, airlines can satisfy customer expectations through personalized offers and packages.

Conclusion

In essence, as the “Amazon of travel,” a one-stop solution for all your passengers’ travel needs, you will have created a remarkable source of income that will help you gain an edge over your competition.