The Power of Automation in Airline Group Sales

Maximizing Revenue with GroupRM: The Power of Automation in Airline Group Sales

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In the rapidly evolving landscape of airline technology, the true potential of automating critical business processes can sometimes be overshadowed by the buzz surrounding AI. Group sales, in particular, represent an area where automation can deliver substantial benefits to airlines, maximizing revenue potential from this crucial market segment.

Our analysis at INIFINITI Software Solutions reveals that despite significant investments in technology across various airline operations, group sales departments often lag, still relying heavily on manual processes. This oversight is particularly striking given that group customers frequently include high-profile clients such as national sports teams attending prestigious events like the Olympics or World Cup.

The key to success lies in ensuring that automated group booking systems like GroupRM bring tangible value to airlines and generate increased revenue from group bookings. A system that can deliver both a premium service to travel agents and end customers while contributing to measurable revenue growth is undoubtedly invaluable.

Let’s explore some of the revenue opportunities that GroupRM unlocks:

  • Increased booking levels
  • Optimized fare offerings
  • Upsell opportunities
  • Compliance revenue

Increased Booking Levels

One of the complexities often encountered with group bookings is accommodating large groups across available flights between two locations. Without automation, splitting groups across multiple flights can be a time-consuming process.

GroupRM provides airline customers with the tools they need to access various scenarios online in real-time, ensuring they can always find the ideal flight solution for their clients’ needs at a competitive price. This self-service capability for travel agents eliminates lengthy research and response times, leading to increased satisfaction and directly correlating to higher group booking levels for the airline.

Moreover, GroupRM’s automation of core flight booking flows and integration with other airline systems enables airlines to protect their seat inventory, ensuring group bookings don’t impact premium revenue opportunities across different customer segments.

Optimized Fare Offerings

While airlines may already offer optimized fares to other customer types, extending this capability to group bookings has traditionally been challenging due to the limitations of standard revenue management systems. GroupRM bridges this gap by seamlessly linking with inventory control and revenue management systems.

The advanced intelligence of GroupRM allows airlines to optimize fare offerings for group customers, ensuring the right fare is offered to the right customer. This protects core revenue by preventing underselling of seats and maximizes revenue from individual bookings.

GroupRM’s specialized algorithms use customer and passenger data to apply expert knowledge in deriving optimal fare offerings for group bookings.

Upsell Opportunities

Many airlines have sophisticated channel offerings and marketing campaigns to maximize upsell opportunities in other segments. However, group sales are often the last channel to be considered for these key opportunities.

GroupRM changes this paradigm by providing easy ways to offer cabin upgrades and ancillary services to group travelers. The platform’s automation ensures these options can be managed and controlled effectively, allowing airlines to confidently offer these revenue-enhancing features.

With GroupRM, travel agents can target cabin upgrades to key passengers on a booking, mixing and matching passengers across available cabins. This flexibility meets customer expectations while driving increased airline revenue.

As highlighted in industry research, ancillary revenue is becoming increasingly important for airlines, with estimates reaching nearly US $118B in 2023. GroupRM ensures group bookings aren’t left out of this key revenue stream by seamlessly integrating ancillary offerings into the standard booking flow.

Compliance Revenue

Group bookings often undergo numerous changes between booking and travel, including flight changes, connecting flights, name changes, and passenger count adjustments. Manual handling of these changes makes it difficult to consistently apply additional fees, restrictions, or rules in line with policies and terms and conditions.

GroupRM’s automation is essential in tracking and managing these changes, keeping customers informed and ensuring correct funds are received throughout the booking lifecycle. The system automatically applies all relevant policies to group bookings, protecting the airline’s key commodity and ensuring revenue from tickets and compliance rules is received as per policy, without the need for manual review of each booking.

Conclusion

At INFINITI we’ve developed GroupRM with a deep understanding of these airline challenges. Our platform offers automated solutions to all the above challenges and more, helping airlines maximize their group sales revenue potential.

Want to find out how GroupRM can transform your airline’s group sales process? Get in touch – we’d love to discuss how we can help you unlock new revenue opportunities and streamline your operations.

6 Aspects Of Automated Airline Group Bookings You Might Not Know

6 Aspects Of Automated Airline Group Bookings You Might Not Know

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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

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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 Airlines Can Provide Exemplary Post-Booking Support For Group Customers

How Airlines Can Provide Exemplary Post-Booking Support For Group Customers

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For a revenue manager, there’s probably no greater joy than taking a group quote to the booking stage. 

However, lacking post-booking support can and has often unraveled all the great work that the airline help desk, sales team, and revenue management professionals have put into making the passengers accept the booking and pay a competitive group fare. 

Complete chaos could ensue at the drop of a hat. An airline route may get disrupted due to bad weather. A passenger may change his plans and want to travel on a different date. Another may want to make changes to their itinerary.

Pretty much anything could happen, and airlines are woefully unprepared for the massive number of group passengers flooding their support systems in need of post-booking support.

But why is that the case even though airlines spend millions on their IT systems each year? 

Challenges in providing post-booking services to group passengers 

Even now, group passengers’ only option when it comes to accessing post-booking support is call centers. The passengers must reach out to the call centers via phone calls or emails to raise their requests manually, and most likely, they must depend on non-airline industry professionals to help them make changes to the itinerary, cancel their bookings, or add ancillaries.

Given the time-sensitivity of these requested modifications and the huge amount of cash involved, customers can be incredibly frustrated by slow or generic responses from the airline. 

Because post-booking support is still handled manually by the airline or partner call centers, they may have a hard time keeping up with support requests coming around the clock. 

Also, the fact that the airline employees in the revenue, sales, or help desk team are occupied with mundane tasks, such as itinerary changes, name updating, etc., brings into question how productive they are. Additionally, airlines’ failure to quickly address cancellation or ticket modification requests can lead to poor customer experience, which will drastically affect the carriers’ ability to bring in repeat business. 

However, the worst issue is the revenue leakage from airlines not being able to provide personalized ancillaries to individual group passengers once the booking has been made. Having to reach out manually for each customization of the booking may leave passengers dissatisfied and lead to the airline losing revenue by not being able to upsell special meals, pre-paid baggage, in-flight Wi-Fi, etc.

The simple fix to airlines’ post-booking woes 

Providing self-service options to your customers and automating whatever is possible is the way to go for making your post-boking process a delight for customers and a revenue winner for the airline.

With the right technology partner for providing post-booking support, airlines can allow customers to make modifications on their own. If a solution like GroupRM is put in place to help with group passengers’ post-booking requests, they will be able to effortlessly change date/ flight time, upsize, downsize, split the PNR, and cancel their group bookings, requesting a refund without the hassle of going through a call center. 

Besides, they will be able to use an online interface to access personalized airlines ancillary inventory, including: 

  • Travel Insurance
  • Tour packages 
  • Baggage services, such as baggage claim tags, baggage insurance, etc. 
  • Pre-boarding, wheelchair assistance for passengers with disabilities
  • Loyalty program memberships
  • Lounge access 
  • Priority boarding 
  • Meals 

In addition, airlines using automated technology for providing post-booking support have a major advantage when it comes to servicing group passengers during flight disruptions. They can send out automatic alerts regarding changes in flight timings or outright cancellations due to factors, such as bad weather. The group customers can easily rebook/ cancel their flights with a few clicks using channels, such as chatbots or the airline website. 

Undoubtedly, this ability of passengers to access self-service throughout the year at any time of the day can lead to the airline saving substantially on support staff or call center bills. 

Another area where airlines can up their post-booking game is the tedious name-updating process. Airlines can empower their travel agent or corporate customers with the ability to update all the group customers’ names on their own by bulk uploading the same without having to depend on time-consuming emails or calls. Notably, the names of the group passengers can also be modified after the booking has been made, if the airline has the right technology in place. 

Conclusion

Automating and allowing for self-service when it comes to post-booking requests can bring numerous benefits to airlines. It will lead to heightened efficiency, accuracy, customer satisfaction, and cost savings, which will help airlines stay competitive in a crowded market. One solution that can help airlines to automate this process is GroupRM, a platform designed specifically for the post-ticketing needs of airlines catering to large numbers of group passengers. With GroupRM, airlines can streamline the post-ticketing process, reducing reliance on manual labor and improving the overall customer experience.

By implementing GroupRM, airlines can take a major step towards improving their post-ticketing process and better serving their customers. Reach us for a demo to learn more. 

How-airlines-can-reduce-distribution-costs-and-win-more-corporate-customers-with-a-next-gen-direct-booking-system

How Airlines Can Reduce Distribution Costs And Win More Corporate Customers With A Next-Gen Direct Booking System

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Over the last few months, corporate travelers have increasingly been taking to the skies in numbers that aren’t that far from pre-pandemic highs. 

The Wall Street Journal notes a steady uptick in corporate travel transactions since early 2022, especially from small and medium-sized businesses. Notably, the demand for corporate travel shows no signs of slowing down, presenting an immense opportunity for airlines to capitalize on this highly lucrative customer segment.

Every airline executive knows that acquiring more corporate customers, providing them with a memorable, frictionless experience, and optimizing the revenue from each of these passengers is mission-critical, given the beating the sector took in the last two years of sustained lockdowns. 

But is the airline industry capable of making the most of this resurgence in the number of corporate customers?

Legacy corporate booking solutions—airlines’ one-way ticket to revenue leakage and poor customer experience 

Airlines are subjected to high Global Distribution System (GDS) fees when they make their inventory available to travel agents and corporates through the distribution network. 

Aside from that, the GDS only allows airlines to share prices and schedules, leaving them unable to upsell with ancillaries, such as travel insurance, checked bag, priority bag drop, lounge access, priority check-in, etc.  

It is further worth noting airlines reliant on the third-party distribution of tickets to corporate customers can’t offer dynamic ticket prices and packages based on the customers’ purchase history and personal information. 

Making matters worse, airlines that rely on agencies like Travel Management Companies (TMCs) to get clients must pay exorbitant commissions, bringing down the carriers’ revenue from business travelers. 

As a result of all this reliance on external parties to distribute their inventory, airlines have no control over the revenue from this crucial segment. 

Reimagining corporate booking with a next-gen direct distribution platform 

To overcome all the pitfalls of the traditional corporate booking system, airlines desperately need a direct distribution system that offers an end-to-end self-service portal for corporates to seamlessly book tickets across multiple channels by integrating with the airline’s passenger service system and corporate Human Resources (HR) software. 

Such a solution will drastically transform the corporate customer experience, given that the business travelers can get ancillaries, discounted tickets due to non-reliance on the GDS, and further ensure that all their company policies are followed—all in a single platform.

Crucially, airlines will be able to handle multiple corporate accounts with the solution and provide their customers with curated offers and travel packages, leading to higher retention rates. Another way airlines can utilize such a solution to bolster corporates’ favorable view of them is by offering loyalty programs, the ability to book tickets in multiple languages, multiple currency options, etc. 

With the platform in place, airlines can potentially save millions of dollars by distributing their content directly to their target audience instead of depending on the GDS or travel agents. Business travelers will also enjoy the convenience that a direct distribution solution offers; corporate staff can book tickets straight from the airline, get approval from their management, and issue the ticket directly or via a travel management company within seconds. 

Since it is a self-service platform that supports mobile and desktop, airlines will have an easy time onboarding more corporates. Also, airlines can delight customers by bundling and unbundling fares, setting up specialized cancellation policies, allowing them to create and manage PNR directly, and enabling them to reschedule as well.

In addition, airlines can draw up pricing agreements with companies or groups of companies that belong to the same customer segment. Upon finalizing the fare, customers can access the booking portal to purchase inventory at the negotiated discount prices directly. As a bonus, the corporate can maintain a direct relationship with the airline, leading to better deals. 

However, the biggest benefit is providing interactive reports to your customers that outline how their business travel program is progressing. Details include whether employees adhere to the company’s business travel policies, how much is being spent, what trips need to be approved, etc. 

Conclusion

As business travel demand soars, airlines need to immediately figure out a way to provide their corporate customers with a direct booking tool that is cost-effective, easy to use, and personalized. With a solution like AgencyDirect, airlines can offer customers unparalleled ease in managing travel policies, self-booking & ticketing across multiple platforms, and trip approval workflows. The airline can also rake in unprecedented revenue due to the increased ancillary sales, distribution cost reduction, and betterment of customer experience. To witness the solution in action, schedule a demo by emailing marketing@infinitisoftware.net

Reinventing-series-booking-for-airlines-through-automation-6

Reinventing Series Booking For Airlines Through Automation

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For airlines looking to increase operating revenue and get consistent business, series bookings from travel agents have emerged as a source of delight.

Now, what are series bookings?

Essentially, if a travel agent or tour operator wants 20 tickets from London to Spain every Saturday for the entirety of the football season, it is considered a series booking.

With series bookings, travel agents no longer have to go through the hassle of making multiple group bookings every time they want to fly their customers to a particular location in a recurring fashion, say every weekend.

At this juncture, when airlines have begun prioritizing the generation of consistent revenue to operate their flights, automating, and making the series booking process seamless can be a gamechanger.

The pains of navigating a flawed series booking process

Before the series booking is finalized, the travel agent would have spent hours or even days on email threads or the phone, explaining the requirement to the group desk. Usually, the travel agent must fill out countless passenger details in the outdated reservation systems of airlines or work on time-consuming spreadsheets to be emailed to the airline sales team.

In both these cases, the airline must spend tons of hours calculating the fare with all the relevant factors in consideration in a highly error-prone process.

The travel agents must then wait for days to get status updates on each group booking within the series booking request. Subsequently, the travel agent must go through each of the group fares and reach out to the group desk team of the airline to painstakingly negotiate all aspects of the series booking quote.

 Often, by the time the negotiations for each ticket are through, the flight fare would’ve already changed.

There is also no mechanism for the travel agent to partially accept, reject, or negotiate the fares.

 Since groups are complex and unpredictable, they require constant changes in terms of schedule, number of people, etc., which is another painful process for the travel agents and the airline.

Automating series booking—a win-win for airlines and travel agents

The process of series booking needs to be streamlined every step of the way.

 Airlines can provide travel agents with a dedicated booking portal to raise series requests with a few clicks using an automation solution.

 They can enter the number of seats they want, the origin & destination, and the price they are willing to pay for the seats. Then, the system automatically comes up with a fare that the travel agent can accept or reject.

 Crucially, the travel agent can even accept parts of the series booking quote and negotiate the rest of the groups’ fares with the airline based on their budget or the ability to get a better deal elsewhere.

 It is worth mentioning that travel agents can make whatever changes they want to the bookings with just a few clicks. Additionally, the travel agent can make the payment right away or pay a small upfront amount.

Either way, the airline gets a significant amount of money that it can use for its operations, along with the guarantee that the flights will be reasonably filled. 

 A great advantage for airlines is that since the quote is generated automatically and instantaneously as the travel agent enters their requirements, there is no room for error.

 Most importantly, if airlines see that the travel agent has declined their quote, they can have their revenue management team reach out manually and provide a fare that will help retain the travel agent’s business. This means that the group desk can focus exclusively on such high-yielding tasks rather than unproductive manual labor, such as following up on emails.

 Moreover, airlines can keep close track of the request history of various travel agents to provide customized promotions that fit the goals of both the sales and revenue management teams.

Conclusion

Automating series booking will pay off in both the short and long term because it saves time and resources for all the stakeholders. In the short term, it provides operating revenue for the airline, and over the long term, they don’t have to face an increase in manual labor for processing series bookings when the number of fleets increases.

GroupRM has played a vital role in many airlines’ efforts to bring in consistent revenue and contribute to their flights having a load factor that makes the trip worthwhile by making series booking a seamless and error-free process. As a result, numerous airlines, especially in the Asian markets, have brought down the average turnaround time per series booking using our solution. 

To know more, Reach us for a demo or book a demo with the sales team at https://stagingv2.grouprm.net/. 

3-Tips-for-Exceptional-Group

3 Tips For Exceptional Group Sales Experience That Retains More Passengers

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Airlines have their work cut out as people worldwide make frenzied travel plans to shake off the misery of the pandemic-induced lockdowns. To benefit from the burgeoning demand for group travel, airlines need to digitize and make the entire process of group booking and pricing pain-free. 

This means that the days of customers emailing the sales team, waiting for days on end for a quote as the sales and revenue management team tussle over optimal pricing, and finally getting an unsatisfactory deal need to be over if airlines ever hope to recover from the pandemic. 

Here, we explore how airlines can start treating group sales as a mission-critical aspect of their operations and provide a booking experience that leads to higher revenue and passenger retention. 

Invest in an intelligent group revenue management solution

Over 60% of group booking business goes to airlines that send the quickest quote. With manual group sales processes, airlines usually spend 5-6 days coming up with a quote that is satisfactory for both the sales and revenue management team. 

Consequently, airlines need an end to end, automated booking solution that can generate instant quotes (based on passenger willingness to pay, market demand & competitor pricing) and contracts while also ensuring airline policy compliance in group bookings across all users, including internal sales team, revenue managers, and travel agents. 

Further, look for a solution to automate bookings, approval, and even the ticketing process for group travel requests across every sales channel. 

Notably, the solution should allow bookings and contracts to be managed in one place to facilitate changes to Passenger Name Records (PNRs). 

Ensure a frictionless user experience

Travel agents and other users who depend on your booking solution need to have a seamless experience with it. Airlines can achieve this using a digital booking solution that eliminates the need for manual review of group bookings, delivers real-time alerts related to the booking, automates contract generation, enables easy payment tracking, and allows users to book tickets based on group/ trip type. Real-time, data-driven recommendations to users is another way to enhance their experience and boost revenue through the sale of ancillaries. 

Prioritize relationships

Ensure that your group sales management solution allows you to effectively manage the relationships between stakeholders, such as travel agents, internal sales teams, and revenue managers. 

Crucially, the solution should allow travel agency level rules to be set up and managed, facilitating trust between sales and revenue teams by ensuring that the group pricing aligns with their goals.

Moreover, airlines can foster transparency between revenue management and sales with a solution that allows both teams to manage group pricing and policies from the same location. 

Apart from this, airlines should use a tool that provides real-time price comparisons so that customers don’t cancel contracts. Leveraging a tool that can track metrics, such as individual customers’ conversion and materialization rate, will also go a long way in facilitating a better relationship between the airline and its group passengers. 

Conclusion 

Group sales account for 5-10% of airline revenue, and in some regions, it is even more than that. Given that corporate travel and tourism is making a comeback with relaxed covid restrictions worldwide, it is time for airlines to invest in an intelligent booking and pricing solution that takes away the pain of group bookings. 

The need of the hour is GroupRM. Its automated itinerary building & relationship-building capabilities, intuitive user interface, and intelligent pricing will keep you ahead of the competition. 

Reach us for a demo / consultation. 

Airlines-recovery-path

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

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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 

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

Customer Segmented Distribution – The Future Of Airline Distribution

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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 

Should-airlines-create-a-specialized

Should Airlines Create A Specialized Online Storefront For Government Travelers?

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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.