Top-group-booking

Top group booking challenges faced by airlines

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Over the past few years, we have seen airlines making attempts to aggressively reduce their costs and increase operational efficiency while trying equally hard to increase their revenue. Hence there has been a rise of new revenue streams which airlines are focused on capitalizing. One of such emerged market opportunity is to serve group booking. Though the group booking phenomenon is continuously on the increase, airlines are still struggling for a hassle-free group booking tool or process. The reasons are many including the fact that the traditional approach tends to bog down in the complexities thrown up by the industry. Let’s glance at top challenges airlines are facing while realizing group booking

Operationally inefficient

Once the airline receives a group travel request, it involves many iterations to quote a fare. The airline’s group desk team needs to collate data, analyze the behavior and consolidate prices from pricing and revenue team. Due to the manual nature of how group request is handled, there is a long wait time for customers to receive relevant information causing dissatisfaction.

Complex communication channel

Group booking involves a lengthy thread of e-mail exchanges between the client and airlines. Also, to respond to a group request with a fare, the local sales team has to coordinate with group desk and revenue management teams. With these multiple layers of communication, there is a higher chance of misunderstanding and human error.

Group Pricing

Airlines group desk faces a tremendous challenge in quoting the RIGHT fare to the right group at the right time. So the airlines need to consider an array of factors before they can compute a group fare. When done manually this is time-consuming with a higher chance of error. Also, there is always a room for inappropriate forecasting.

Difficulty in adhering to terms and policies

Group fares come with terms and conditions. Different groups will have different cancellation, rescheduling and payment terms. It may be difficult for a manual system to ensure policy compliance and perform quality check accurately. This makes the airlines vulnerable to fraudulent and unethical behavior which could result in revenue and brand dilution.

A massive set of the workforce

For quoting a group fare, various teams are involved, and they spend a considerable amount of time on deciding the fares. Besides, some teams are required to do regular follow-ups, verification of documents and manual entry of the group details. This involves a considerable workforce and cost associated with it.

Groups are going forward

Today’s travelers expect information instantly, and any delay is unacceptable. The airline with quicker response time, better price wins the group contract. Also, an opportunity to negotiate on the fares leaves room for a higher chance of acceptance rate. However, with a manual system, these can never become a reality which inhibits a faster business conversion.

Driven by the demands of the industry, many premier airlines have already started automating their entire group revenue management process in their wisdom. Quick adoption of a highly intuitive and robust group booking tool is the only way forward!

Maximize-airline-revenue

Maximize airline revenue by implementing Dynamic Pricing for group booking

by with No Comment Blogs

Be a business travel or tour, group traveling is always an exciting one. The exhilaration would be much better if the fare and process of group booking are made seamless and faster. As group travel is becoming increasingly popular, airlines should gear up their group booking procedures to serve customers efficiently. Airlines do not require a mere group booking solution but a group booking revenue management system. The advantage of group booking revenue management system lies in providing the right fare to the right group at the right time. The appropriate blend of these three elements is the powerhouse of revenue to the airlines.

Right Fare to the Right Group

On an average, medium sized airline group desk receives around 150 to 200 group request during low demand season and it ranges up to 500 during peak season. Though airline sets the turn around time to be few hours, it takes around two days to process each request. Here, identification of the right fare to be quoted to the right group becomes a mandate that would yield better revenue to the airlines. Depending on various factors such as availability, current load factor, size of the group, requested fare, nature of trip and demand the best fare should be quoted. But the changing nature of all the above mentioned factors makes it difficult for the airlines in decision making to groups. For which a dynamic pricing strategy, speedy processing and altogether an automation is vital.

Right Fare at the Right Time

A dynamic pricing strategy must be applicable to multiple scenarios on the basis of market condition. The challenge of the airlines lie on deciding the fare to be quoted for each group travel request. The travelers now are more keen to negotiate on their group booking and be assured of receiving the best deals. Airlines have to monitor the competitors price as well as evaluate the customer’s history to quote a price. Conjointly, there also exists special scenarios where airlines decide on promotional fares and surge fares varying from sectors and season. Since the customers are provided with huge choice and the probability of switching is also too high, group fare negotiations help airlines to retain the customers. It requires a timely decision with a right fare in order to maximize revenue from each group request.

Right Group at the Right Time

While hundreds of group requests are being showered on the group desk analysts, it consumes huge manpower and time to process them. Prioritisation of the group becomes almost impossible as the processing of group requests begins as in the request arrives. The challenge lies in choosing which group request to be processed first with the appropriate fare. Priority of serving group requests includes not only the volume of passengers traveling but also the revenue and prior client relationship of the airlines. An opportune fare on time and automation in work process are the key to retain internal and external customers.

Considering all the above scenarios, a customer sending group request to two different airlines, one with a manual processing and another with an automated group booking tool. Imagine, it takes one days to obtain a reply from manual processing while it takes an hour from an automated group booking solution. That’s where the power of automation lies. !! While myriad obstacles are being put forth to an airline front. If there could be any one stop solution to all the problems being posed, then bringing an automation to the process becomes the answer.