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.

GroupRM – Streamlining Offer And Order Management For Airline Group Customers

GroupRM – Streamlining Offer And Order Management For Airline Group Customers

The airline industry has long relied on Passenger Service Systems (PSS) and Global Distribution Systems (GDS) to support the group booking process. However, most airlines are still managing group bookings manually, which doesn’t satisfy the needs of today’s tech-savvy travelers. With the rise of metasearch engines, passengers will do their flight comparisons and analysis to plan their journeys.

To adapt to the changing landscape, airlines must embrace a more advanced offer and order management model to retain customers. This shift presents a remarkable opportunity to upgrade digitally and unlock substantial revenue potential.

Addressing Current Group Booking Offer Management Issues

These processes are primarily email driven. Airlines depend heavily on email responses and calls, leading to inconsistencies in data tracking and potential miscommunications. It is time-consuming for both the airline group booking team and group passengers and it also leads to many human errors. Sometimes it may end up with frustrations that customers reflect from delayed processes.

Since there is no access to real-time data airline executives cannot make guaranteed decisions from their reports. Some of the limitations are,

  1. Less visibility on group passengers’ history and preferences
  2. Restricted ability to provide a shopping experience for different travel products
  3. Inability to offer personalized products or sell new travel products
  4. Difficulty in applying complex group policies

The manual nature of these operations means that the airline team’s primary goal is to sell group booking seats. Selling personalized travel ancillaries becomes their secondary priority and proves to be a challenging task. This is a serious missed revenue opportunity for airlines to let it slip away. If they have to do it, they need to compile it from multiple sources and complex distribution systems to understand customer behavior, which consumes a lot of time and has constraints.

How GroupRM Revolutionizes Offer Management

Booking Engine

This is a single integrated platform where the airline team will be provided with a self-sufficient web portal to upload, create and manage group booking requests. It will also provide analytics to strategize and offer personalized travel products. Airlines will benefit from it since it seamlessly integrates revenue management and other distribution platforms to get real-time data. 

Hyper-Personalization

Group revenue managers and group sales desks can manage and offer hyper-personalized products to the targeted customers. The offers can be easily pushed out to both air and non-air contents. It is a win-win for both serving a wide variety of customer needs. 

Intelligent Pricing

All the data is synchronized and used for future purposes where the airline teams no longer have to go back and forth on the group quote. GroupRM will automatically generate group quotes using the available data and real-time evaluation. It doesn’t only create a group quote but dives within to even create a bundled offer that’s perfect for travel ancillaries. 

Compared to the legacy type, this automated solution will help provide higher margin content that helps reach airline revenue goals. With GroupRM, airline executives will now be able to do the following 4 tasks effectively. 

Identify customer – Customized portal to segregate different user categories and get the reportsPresent – Analyze the customer’s behaviors and preferences and create the right product.
Shop – Target personalized offerings based on current inventory, historical performance, and future forecastPricing – Use historical behavior and the current trend to forecast group materialization

Addressing Current Group Booking – Order Management Issues

It is primarily based on the reservation system. The entire ticketing process, from group requests to confirmation, will be tedious and time-consuming for airline executives. The order processing is likely to be slow, and group passengers will face the following constraints:

  1. Communication is limited to email and phone for bookings
  2. Limited awareness of new travel products 
  3. Extended waiting and processing times for group bookings 

How GroupRM Revolutionizes Order Management

GroupRM provides several features that allow airlines to streamline group bookings with real-time information, quote generation, booking confirmation, payment processing, and reporting. This strengthens the airline’s ability to effectively manage orders. 

Business Intelligence

GroupRM utilizes an advanced set of data analytics that give a deep understanding of customer behavior, market trends, and historical booking data. This gives airlines a deeper understanding of their target audience and makes informed decisions.

Customer Segmentation

With GroupRM’s business intelligence tools, airlines can categorize factors such as travel preferences, demographics, loyalty status, and purchasing patterns. This segmentation enables airlines to tailor their offers and promotions to specific customer segments, enhancing personalization and customer satisfaction.

Comprehensive automation

This is one of the cores of GroupRM’s capabilities. It gives a complete automation package for online order fulfillment, handling payments, post-booking modifications, and ticketing that gives 10x process fulfillment.

Smart shopping

This is a user-first interface where the customer will be provided with an intuitive web portal to prioritize the shopping experience for their travel products. The upside for airlines is the ability to understand customer behavior and upsell travel products. 

About GroupRM

GroupRM has proven to be a game-changer for over 25 airlines, providing airline revenue managers, group sales desks, and administrators with seamless tracking and oversight of all group booking operations. The results were proven to get up to 28% revenue gain from full-service and low-cost carriers yielding remarkable outcomes. Within weeks of implementation, the solution will itself recover its investment by delighting the group passengers worldwide.

Schedule a demo or contact us now to take the first step towards transforming your airline’s group booking success with GroupRM.

How Can Airlines Eliminate 90 Of Group Booking Revenue Fraud With An Automated Solution

How Can Airlines Eliminate 90% Of Group Booking Revenue Fraud With An Automated Solution?

Airlines worldwide have faced numerous data breaches, compromises, and loopholes resulting from outdated management systems and technical issues.

According to IATA, airline fraud costs approximately $858 million per year. Security threats come in various forms, including employee fraud, phishing schemes, fake customer accounts, fraudulent travel agencies, and triangulation schemes. 

Ticket booking fraud directly impacts revenue and exposes vulnerabilities. Fraudulent activities in group bookings can cost airlines millions of dollars, which becomes unsustainable over time.

Let’s see the common types of revenue fraud in group bookings

1. Employee Fraud

Airline employees who know the loopholes of the system will exploit the bookings for their personal benefits. The employees may book group tickets for their friends or family members at the expense of the airlines leaving no trace. 

2. Fake Travel Agencies

When a traveler requests a group quote, the unregistered travel agencies may book/cancel the flights, release fabricated stories, and have fake credit cards/ bank accounts. They impersonate the original and tie up with different travel agencies fetching their user accounts leading to personal information misuse.

3. Dark Web

This type of fraud is non-traceable and airlines will usually have no idea how attackers gained access to this information. With both ad hoc and group bookings done online, data leaks and misuse are susceptible to fraud and attacks. Airlines will mostly be in the dark on how long and what types of information they got access to.

4. Stolen Loyalty Miles

Fraudsters steal unused loyalty points/miles from business travelers or affluent individuals and utilize them for their own benefit. Group bookings, which involve higher costs and consequently higher earned loyalty miles, result in substantial revenue loss for airlines.

Recommended steps to be taken by airlines to secure their revenue for group bookings

1. Integrating a booking system

A single-platform integrated booking system is so much easier as every group booking activity can be tracked and monitored. It is an end-to-end centralized system where group bookings are handled from start to end. An airline revenue management system also reports and detects any suspicious activities. Moreover, the airline staff has complete authorization control to stop or process any steps. 

2. Implementing group policies

Group policies act as an extra layer of protection against any unfavorable activities to the airlines. Manual tracking of group policies is extremely difficult and vulnerable to many data points. A group policy engine will allow you to configure diverse group policies such as regional, request types, air routes, seasonal policies, profile types, etc., resulting in 100% compliance. 

3. Multi-level authentication

All the vulnerable points of the airline can be added to a multi-layer authentication or 2-step verification at certain points to prevent unauthorized usage. The airline can maintain the session limitation to terminate inactive sessions when not in use. The airline staff can fortify their security measures and block all the compromised emails while they can launch a full-scale investigation to ensure the safety of passengers and customers. 

It is easier with the airline revenue management system to initiate remedial measures. 

These three steps have the potential to prevent 90% of revenue fraud in airline group bookings, assuming a robust system is in place. 

Conclusion

News of revenue fraud and system vulnerabilities spreads rapidly. Our airline revenue management solution, GroupRM, has been developed by travel tech experts at Infiniti Software Solutions, who have taken various security scenarios into account, including fake payment information, fraudulent travel agencies, scams, loyalty fraud, and safeguarding against 90% of revenue frauds.

Talk to our experts to know how GroupRM will protect the system – Schedule a demo.

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.

How Airlines Can Capitalize “Revenge Travel” With A Group Booking Solution

How Airlines Can Capitalize “Revenge Travel” With A Group Booking Solution

After the Covid-19 pandemic-induced travel restrictions ended, millions took to the skies, determined to make up for the time they lost without a vacation.

This phenomenon, “revenge travel” can be utilized to recover airlines’ losses due to the persistent lockdowns around the world.

People are increasingly traveling in groups to their dream destinations and are more than willing to pay premium rates for a great travel experience.

However, this spike in demand isn’t something airlines are prepared to deal with due to their reliance on legacy group booking software. Manual means of processing group requests can’t keep up with the massive number of requests that are currently flooding help desks. Aside from that, airlines have no way of personalizing offers with dynamic prices and ancillaries, which means a lot of potential revenue is lost.

How an automated group booking solution can help airlines maximize revenue from revenge travelers

1. Instant Quote for All Group Bookings

Airlines usually take 1 to 2 weeks to process, calculate and quote group bookings. The pricing isn’t available instantly and the fare quoted is not fool-proof from revenue leakages or losses. The quote then has to be negotiated manually before finalizing the amount.

When you have a group booking system, the users can get instant quotes via a web portal. The Intelligent AI-based algorithm can generate a quote considering various parameters instantly. The group travelers don’t have to wait for emails, calls, and messages, as every step from making the group request to receiving an optimal quote is automated.

2. Optimal Pricing for Group Bookings

Even if airlines manage to seize all their group booking opportunities, there will always be a question about the pricing strategies airlines use. “Does it maximize revenue?”, “Was the group pricing we quoted profitable?”, “Was the pricing too high/low?”.

The current airline group revenue management system isn’t fully capable of optimizing the pricing strategies for high materialization rates and profitability. But with a solution like GroupRM, which comes with real-time dynamic pricing based on factors, like load factor, competitor fare, etc., airline revenue managers can rest assured that the price they are offering is the best possible one that will lead to a booking.

3. Personalizing Ancillaries for Group Travelers

After Covid-19, airlines understood that they needed to extend their services by offering personalized ancillaries to the relevant groups. In the current group booking system, ancillaries are manual and the travelers have to request seat upgrades, meals and baggage, and insurance details separately in emails or chats or by reaching out to the help desk or sales team. This could be a big inconvenience for group travelers and airlines may not be able to give a smooth booking experience.

To solve this, airlines can use an automated system for recommending ancillaries and allow passengers to add on whatever special purchase they want to make. Because of the impact of the pandemic, many people may be concerned about their health, so you can offer up ancillaries, such as travel insurance, telemedicine, etc., to bolster revenue. Providing such a personalized experience will also go a long way in helping the airline retain customers.

4. Self-Reliant, Fast, and Secure Web Portal

Group travelers will be best served using a secure and easy-to-use web portal for all their requests, booking, ticketing, and post-booking modifications, such as changing itineraries, adding ancillaries, etc. This will save them a lot of time and effort because the usual way of booking group tickets is quite tedious. You can expand your customer base by having a web portal with multiple language/ payment options.

5. Making The Post-Booking Process Effortless

The booking part alone isn’t the final step; airlines need to continue providing all the required support to the group travelers till their departure.

It is quite common to see the groups changing their dates, number of people, and destinations. Many steps are handled manually when it comes to upsizing, downsizing, dividing, and changing itineraries. Airlines doing all this manually will end up causing delays for the passengers and consequently bringing down the productivity of the help desk team.

Airlines can introduce automation into the process by using a solution like GroupRM. It can send out alerts, reminders for payment, name updating, etc., that will help group travelers planning trips post-COVID. Meanwhile, airlines can delight their passengers by letting them make their changes to the itinerary straight from a web portal rather than making them contact the help desk via email or phone.

Conclusion

Airlines have been missing out on the potential 28% rise in group booking revenue. With an automation solution like GroupRM, airlines can replace the inefficient process which results in revenue leakages. You can also personalize the flying experience of travelers looking to shake off the boredom from COVID lockdowns and make them lifelong patrons of the airline.

Offer And Order Management Challenges Holding Back Airlines’ Group Booking Revenue

Offer And Order Management Challenges Holding Back Airlines’ Group Booking Revenue

Given how the airline industry must contend with heavy regulation, wildly fluctuating fuel prices, and many more challenges that threaten it daily, they have strived to become masters at revenue maximization.

Everything from a bottle of water to a few extra inches of legroom on a flight has become subject to careful consideration when it comes to pricing. Airlines have even managed to compartmentalize the entire flight, splitting passengers into categories based on purchasing power to charge optimal rates for each person. 

Further, airlines have automated nearly everything that happens after a person makes a booking, such as payment reminders, ticket generation, requests to update the passenger’s name, etc. 

Despite all these advancements in automation and predictive technology, airlines have struggled to bring to group bookings the same convenience, personalization, and dynamic pricing that individuals get when they book a flight. As a result, airlines are losing their opportunity to increase group revenue by up to 28%

Why legacy offer and order creation methods aren’t doing airlines any favors

Every aspect of a group booking, including offer creation, order creation, and post-sales support, is riddled with inefficiencies that cause revenue leakage, poor help desk productivity, and a subpar customer experience. 

When a customer wants a group quote, most airlines have them send an email with their requirements. The airline cannot know how valuable the group is, so the email goes to the bottom of the pile. By the time the revenue management team, sales, or the help desk gets to it, the customer has most likely requested quotes from multiple airlines.

3 out of 4 times, the customer accepts the group quote from the airline that responds first. 

The email-driven process also means that the airline has no way of knowing the customers’ buying history, level of urgency, purchasing power, ancillary requirements, etc., which leads to a generic offer. 

Meanwhile, for the order to be created, the customer must go through the airline’s reservation system, which isn’t typically designed to handle the nuances of group bookings. The airline cannot quickly create PNRs with multiple group terms and conditions. Aside from that, the customer faces issues, such as difficulties in payment due to the size and complexity of the booking and the tiresome manual ticketing process.

Post-ticketing, the call centers that handle the customers’ calls have difficulty providing proper ancillaries or the ability to quickly modify or partially cancel the bookings, leading to poor customer experience.  

What should airlines prioritize to maximize group booking revenue?

The next decade belongs to the airlines that can reimagine the group booking process. 

Given that premium corporate customers make many group bookings, airlines that prioritize modernizing the entire process to make it more personalized and convenient can expect a huge upside. 

One of the best investments an airline can make in this regard is implementing an AI-powered group booking solution, like GroupRM, that can provide customers easy to use online interface to make their group requests with all the customizations they need. 

The platform further equips you with the ability to provide customers with special group fares, direct confirmation of bookings, purchase specialized ancillaries, and, most importantly, make, modify, or cancel bookings via self-service. 

Besides, the prices provided by the solution would be real-time fares that the customers can negotiate or accept via the same platform in a few clicks. 

An airline in Southeast Asia saw revenue from retail groups increase from zero to $1.5M in 3 months with the implementation of an online interface for their passengers to make group bookings easily.

Further, payments can be made through multiple means, such as credit card, BSP, wire transfer, cash, etc., and an EMD can be generated against the payment. Additionally, the customers can update their group passengers’ names simultaneously without the airline having to follow up to get each one. 

Due to the increased visibility and ease of booking provided by the group booking software, an Indian carrier saw its daily group requests increase from 800 to 4000 within three months.  

As this unfolds, the airline’s revenue manager can track and manage all group bookings through a unified platform. 

Through this automation of the order, offer, and post-booking management process, airlines can ensure optimal revenue, increased customer satisfaction, high efficiency by eliminating manual chores and being on top of all the relevant group booking metrics as well. 

Conclusion 

Over 20 airlines, both full-service and budget carriers, have employed GroupRM to reimagine their group booking process and consequently enjoyed stellar results. The solution paid for itself in a matter of weeks by providing a delightful booking experience to retail customers, corporates, and travel agency partners. Notably, airlines reported being able to tackle all the limitations that they had been facing with their previous group booking systems. 

If, as a revenue manager, you are interested in providing your group passengers with transparent pricing, personalized ancillaries, customizable group requests & policies based on segment, and a hassle-free experience from requesting to the time of ticket generation, reach us for a demo.

How GroupRM Can Help Airlines Modernize Their Group Booking Process

How GroupRM Can Help Airlines Modernize Their Group Booking Process 

In recent years, airlines have increasingly embraced customer-centricity with dynamic and personalized offers. 

However, airlines are struggling to transition to the modern retailing landscape, especially with group bookings, due to an overreliance on legacy systems. 

Legacy Group Bookings— Airlines’ One-Way Ticket to Revenue Leakage and Poor Customer Experience

Typically, group bookings are made by customers over weeks with Google Forms, lengthy email exchanges with the sales/ revenue management teams, or phone calls to call centers. 

With airlines desperate to find new avenues of growth and revenue, legacy group booking methods are casting a cloud over the industry’s future.

Traditional ways of acquiring and servicing group passengers come with the following drawbacks:

  • Processing a group request over call or email takes weeks.
  • Reliance on distribution channels and travel agents with high commissions leads to lower revenue for the airline despite sky-high ticket prices.
  • Airlines cannot personalize offers or provide dynamic quotes 
  • Customers can’t purchase ancillaries because legacy distribution systems only allow airlines to display airfare and schedules. 
  • Airlines can’t offer customized terms and conditions based on the customer segment.
  • Manual ticketing makes payment collection, PNR updating, name updating, etc., a nightmare.
  • Post-ticketing services, such as canceling and modifying tickets, are time-consuming.

How GroupRM helps you navigate these challenges

GroupRM is an AI-powered solution for airlines to manage group bookings seamlessly, offer a differentiated “experience” rather than just selling flight tickets, bring down distribution costs, and increase revenue with dynamic pricing.

GroupRM capabilities

Offer Management

GroupRM allows you to identify the customer with their buying habits. Having identified the customer, you can offer a group quote with dynamic pricing instantly based on their purchase history, competitor rates, load factor, pre-set policy, etc.

This reduction in the turnaround time for delivering group quotes is especially valuable, given that 3 out of 4 group customers accept the first quote they receive. 

Importantly, you can offer personalized ancillaries to the customer, delivering a “shopping experience” guaranteed to significantly increase their satisfaction with the booking experience. 

Automating the offer management process with instant, optimally priced group quotes and ancillaries will save the revenue manager’s time, boost the materialization rates, and ultimately increase the airline’s revenue.

Order Management

The group customers benefit from an easy-to-use web portal where they can book, modify, or cancel their tickets.

Customers have the luxury of negotiating group fares in the same portal. Once the airline provides them with an acceptable quote, the customers can accept the fare quickly, make payments, get their PNR and tickets issued, and update their names.  It is also worth mentioning that the customers can request modifications to the ticket, including upsizing, downsizing, and changes to the itinerary.

Group policy enforcement

Airlines can set up customized markups and commissions for travel agencies and corporate clients, boosting revenue. Airlines can also configure specific cancellation and booking policies for each type of group based on the country or region, the date of departure, etc. 

Importantly, after a booking is made, and the group customer or travel agent has made the partial payment, the solution can send payment reminders, reminders to update the passenger’s name and other details, etc. This ensures that the sales or revenue management team doesn’t constantly follow up with the customers for these trivial issues. 

Passengers often get quotes from multiple travel agents, so airlines provide different quotes to the same customer via different travel agencies. The group policy enforcement capabilities of GroupRM can play a crucial role in weeding out these duplicate requests coming from travel agencies.

Automating series bookings

Series bookings are group bookings pre-purchased by a travel agent regularly on the same flight. For instance, travel agents can tell the airline they want 20 seats on a flight from London to Madrid every Saturday for the football season. This type of booking is done when the travel agent or tour operator knows there will be predictable demand for a particular period, and they don’t want to make group bookings repeatedly. Tour operators who handle large volumes of pilgrims or travel managers making a reservation for a work conference can also make use of this functionality.

In all these instances, the travel agents can self-book series inventory. Instead of making multiple group bookings, which is a hassle when managing groups with multiple departure spots, the travel agent can raise a single request with all his requirements met. The agent can customize details including the number of seats, origin and destination, and the expected fare, and raise the request. The airline revenue management team can quickly evaluate the request to accept or deny it fully or partially. The airline can even negotiate the rates for the entire booking or various groups with the travel agent.

Based on the relationship with the travel agent, the airline can even offer special prices that incentivize further booking.  Through these series bookings, the airline can ensure that the flight is reasonably filled well in advance and that they get substantial money to fund their operations beforehand. 

This automation in raising series requests saves everyone involved a lot of time because previously travel agents had to call or email the airline help desk or a call center and make all the bookings manually.

Conclusion 

Depending on legacy processes for pricing, offer creation, and group booking processing is a massive drain on your resources, and it is also guaranteed to leave your passengers dissatisfied. The distribution cost is also exorbitant, given how much legacy reservation systems and travel agencies charge. 

As an alternative, you can embrace group booking automation, offer, and order management software, GroupRM, which has helped many of our clients get up to a 28% rise in group revenue.

The software helps airlines provide group customers with a personalized, cost-effective, and memorable flying experience. It further empowers airlines to offer their travel agency customers special fares and an effortless series booking experience. Schedule a demo to speak with our experts to see how GroupRM can help your airline. 

Breaking The Myths Of Group Booking

Breaking The Myths Of Group Booking

Breaking the myths of group booking

The recent trend has witnessed the growth of air travel at the rate of 6.2 % globally. Moreover be it business, school or leisure trip, travelers prefer to explore in groups. Group booking provides enormous opportunity for airlines to increase their revenue. Yet most of the airlines are hesitant to bring a reform in managing their group booking. Let’s look at some myths that is preventing airlines to recognize the significance of the group booking.

Groups are low yield

Group booking has always been considered as a way to fill up distressed inventory, but in reality the situation is divergent. On the contrary, airlines can set up multiple pricing strategies for different scenarios with various discounts and markups that will result to higher yield. Also group booking opens up opportunities for airlines to sell more ancillaries that adds up to its revenue. In fact, proper revenue management and demand forecasting helps airlines to generate revenue and grow profitably.

Groups have low retention

Group desk analysts always have a premonition of loosing clients. The reason for such low retention is not the low demands of a group, but unsatisfactory service of airlines. Requesters tend to loose patience and switch over to other vendors when there is long delay in responding to travel requests. Airlines have to upgrade themselves, give the user the option of negotiating for better fares. Quick response and enhanced customer service will make the groups return again and again.

Groups are difficult to serve

The battleground in the airline industry is moving away from the sky to technological cloud, it is an old adage that groups are difficult to serve. When earlier it took two to three days to respond a group request now it can be processed within few seconds. Gone are the days when airlines had to maintain a large group desk, and group desk managers had to closely work with revenue management team to announce a quote. In this technological era, there are endless possibilities of increasing the coordination between the group desk analysts and revenue management team and reducing the inconvenience of serving.

High demand flights don’t need groups

High demand flights will have a higher price range than normal flight. Usually in such flight travelers for whom it is important to fly will be ready to pay a price surge. The load factor of such flight will be less. When we have an opportunity to increase our load factor why not consider group booking as a way to increase the revenue! With analytics it has become all the more easier to predict the demands and quote fares to the group requester.

So why shy away from group booking? These myths have no relevance in todays world, where airlines have started to revamp their former ways of group booking with group revenue management solutions that automates the entire group booking process, making it quick and effective. There will always be excuses behind the mind, but recognizing the opportunity in business at the right time and taking the right step paves the way for success.

How-Automated-Group-Revenue-Management

How Automated Group Revenue Management Can Fuel Airline Recovery

Airlines are increasingly flooded with group booking requests, and there is every reason to believe these valuable revenue-generating opportunities are squandered.

All thanks to legacy systems that include an outdated help desk and an overburdened revenue management team.

The group revenue management process is among the last areas airlines are yet to optimize by leveraging the latest technology, and the results are telling.

Travel is returning to its pre-pandemic highs, but airlines are still struggling to find a footing by differentiating themselves from their competitors with dynamic, transparent group pricing and exceptional customer experience. 

Reinventing group revenue management—the way out of the pandemic and beyond

Taking a group booking request and turning it into a source of revenue growth and customer satisfaction requires that an airline is on point with every aspect of the group booking.

Unfortunately, most airlines are in no position to pull off this feat.  

This reality warrants the reinvention of group revenue management via a next-generation tool powered by AI, GroupRM.  

Here is what GroupRM offers that will make you stand out from all your competitors and enable your airline to generate the best possible amount of revenue from group bookings.

GroupRM benefits for soaring airline revenue

Optimal prices delivered at the earliest and to the right groups

One of the biggest pain points of group booking customers, whether travel agents or retail customers, is the seemingly arbitrary pricing.  

This misunderstanding happens because the flight prices would have changed several times before the airline came up with a quote, many days after the group booking request came in.

Doing away with all this hassle for the customer and airline, GroupRM automatically generates the best possible price for the group instantaneously and sends a quote.

The customer can then negotiate for better group rates with the revenue management team, which would provide the former with a sense of control over the pricing that wouldn’t be possible if the airline came back with random prices after wasting tons of the customer’s time.

Another striking ability of GroupRM is the capacity to identify high yield groups based on historical analysis to deliver the best possible pricing

As a direct result of the automation, the airline is guaranteed better fares, higher group conversion rates, and more revenue.

Unified platform for seamless booking, negotiating, finalizing, and tracking of group requests

Retail customers, travel agents, group desk analysts, corporate travel managers, airline salesforce—wherever the group requests come from—have a single, easy-to-use interface to request a group booking.  

The booking is processed and evaluated by the airline right away, considering the historical buying behavior of the group, load factor, and competitor’s rate.

Through the same platform, customers can negotiate special rates with the airline in a transparent manner.

Supercharge helpdesk productivity

Generating quotes based on current prices, sending reminders for making payments, deciding the best pricing strategy, and checking for policy compliance in the booking are all tasks that can be automated. 

GroupRM takes care of the automation so that the revenue management team can focus on more revenue-generating tasks, such as negotiating and finalizing the best group prices.

Discover new revenue streams and optimize existing ones

Using GroupRM, airlines have the unique opportunity to run sales campaigns for high yield tickets after considering industry standards and competitor pricing.

Owing to the custom offer management capabilities that GroupRM provides, airlines can also optimize revenue by cross-selling ancillaries and providing personalized discounts.

Further, airlines can prevent revenue leakage with consistent reminders to customers for payments and for updating the name lists through the customer’s preferred channel. Notably, the GroupRM tool takes convenience to another level by allowing customers to pay in the mode of choice.

No more friction between sales and revenue management

The GroupRM team conducted a poll of airline sales and revenue professionals, and we got hard evidence for something we’d already sensed was happening; there are huge conflicts regarding group pricing.

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With software like GroupRM, there won’t be any more friction between revenue management and sales; the group policy enforcement is automatic and centralized, meaning both sales and revenue management can rest assured that their pricing policies have been met. 

Since everything is done transparently, any escalation between the customers, sales, and revenue teams can be resolved efficiently. 

Conclusion 

GroupRM has led the way, processing millions of group requests each year that make both the sales and revenue management teams of airlines happy, with fully booked flights of high yield passengers. Further, travel agents throng the airlines implementing our solution, thanks to how they can get the best group booking deals for clients at lightning speed. 

To know how your airline can join the league of high revenue growth airlines that also delight customers, reach us for a GroupRM demo/ consultation with an airline revenue maximization expert. 

Airlines-recovery-path

Airline’s Recovery Path To Profitability After The Pandemic – Reduced Distribution Cost And Increased Ancillary Revenue

After months of lockdowns and travel curbs, the aviation sector is on the path to recovery, but profitability seems to be out of reach for many airlines. Airlines are especially finding it hard to fill seats due to many passengers’ hesitancy to board flights (only 61% of passengers are comfortable flying in the next six months). 

Further, airlines must combat unreasonably high distribution costs, which are among their most significant expenses, thanks to the oligopoly of the three most prominent GDS companies. To make matters worse, ancillary sales, an important revenue driver, have fallen by 73% year on year.

Consequently, airlines’ chances of returning to pre-pandemic levels of profitability will depend entirely on whether they can drastically cut distribution costs and come up with ancillaries that passengers will care about in the era of COVID. 

As you read on, you will find out exactly how airlines can go about achieving this. 

The value proposition of NDC

The New Distribution Capability (NDC), an XML-based standard for data transmission, put forward by the IATA, can disrupt the vice-like control that the major GDS companies have on airline distribution.

By letting airlines control their offer, ticketing, and settlement processes without the GDS across all channels, NDC enables them to cut costs significantly. Moreover, if airlines partner with multiple NDC aggregators globally, competition between the aggregators will bring down distribution costs to around $ 2-4 instead of the $14 – 25 that airlines are currently spending. 

In addition to this, airlines can cut back on distribution costs with an automated group revenue management solution that ensures that group bookings are made in a manner that brings in the most revenue while spending the least possible amount on distribution. 

There is also the option of partnering with various governments to serve as the official carrier of the nation. This means that without any indirect and expensive distribution channel, you can reach hundreds of high-yield passengers.

Boosting revenue with ancillaries

Ancillary sales are way down now that customer priorities have changed. Mainly, passengers are looking for safety from covid, personalization, and great value for money. As a result, the ancillaries you offer need to reflect these realities. 

For instance, many airlines have found great success by offering comprehensive covid insurance covering quarantine, telemedicine, screening, etc., if passengers test positive for the virus. Also, you can make it a point to offer immunity-boosting kits and baggage wrapping for enhanced protection from the infection.  

Notably, you can offer passengers the ability to book the seats next to them to ensure social distancing. 

Another ancillary that passengers will be delighted by is the ability to cancel free of charge if they catch covid.

Meanwhile, your corporate passengers can benefit from Wi-Fi, easy seat upgrades, access to business lounges, shuttle service to their destination from the airport, etc.

With tourists, a surefire way to boost revenue is by offering fully packaged trips to places, such as religious destinations. Specifically, you can provide food, hotel bookings, car rentals, bus services, etc., which will enhance your profit margins.  

Airlines can further offer ancillaries, such as relaxation and well-being packages, given how people have endured a lot of stress and trauma during the pandemic

Conclusion 

There is a lot of uncertainty ahead regarding when passengers will regain confidence in traveling. However, by following the double-pronged approach of bringing down distribution costs and boosting ancillary sales with personalized offers, airlines can return to profitability in no time. 

If your airline needs an IT partner for implementing Direct Distribution Solution or any Consultancy to generate the maximum possible revenue from every seat, reach us at marketing@infinitisoftware.net