Air Asia Press

AirAsia India Upgrades Group Booking Experience With GroupRM

The airline’s investment in digital transformation is set to bolster group booking experience for its customers

In a statement, the CEO and Managing Director of Infiniti, Ananth Narasimhan, expressed great enthusiasm at the prospect of GroupRM helping the airline grow its revenue. He said, “AirAsia India is going to benefit from the ability to leverage historical data to balance supply and demand, understand passenger willingness to pay, and make faster and more profitable decisions. GroupRM is currently used by 25 of the most successful airlines from around the world, and we are confident that its implementation will certainly add value to the airline’s biggest source of group bookings—travel agents—who will be able to effortlessly book tickets in bulk and continue to extend support to the airline.”

Expressing his views, Ankur Garg, Chief Commercial Officer, AirAsia India, said,“We are happy to collaborate with Infiniti, in continuation of other digital initiatives including our new website, AI-powered chatbot Tia and various other systems, all designed to enhance our guest experience. We are confident that our travel partners will benefit from GroupRM’s user friendly functionality to fulfill group travel requests including weddings, conferences, sports and event groups effectively with a fully automated end-to-end solution from request to negotiation to booking fulfillment.”

GroupRM’s additional features include self-service options like cancellation, name updation ingrained through the tool that can be done instantly.

About Infiniti

Headquartered in Chennai, India, Infiniti Software Solutions delivers cutting-edge travel and aviation technology solutions. Major airlines, travel agents, and corporates are part of its impressive list of clients.

Infiniti has come up with products that allow airlines to optimize revenue by effectively managing group traffic and handle corporate, travel agency, and tour operator bookings hassle-free. Owing to the CRM with multichannel integration, customer support has also become a breeze for airiness. Even during flight delays/ cancellations, airlines can stay in control with Infiniti’s AI-powered airline disruption management software.

Infiniti also aims to make corporate business travel itineraries lighter in terms of cost and the time spent to book tickets through its automated travel planning solution. Further, companies can manage their business expenses through a single web interface and empower employees to get reimbursed easily for the same with Infiniti’s business expense management solution.

Recently, the company has launched a next-generation, NDC-enabled travel booking platform for travel agencies and tour operators. The latter businesses can also benefit from end-to-end automation of operations with Infiniti’s travel agency automation solution. You can view the complete list of products and how they will help you at https://infinitisoftware.net/

About AirAsia India

Headquartered in Bengaluru, India, AirAsia India Limited is a joint-venture between Tata Sons Private Limited and AirAsia Investment Limited. AirAsia India commenced operations on 12th June 2014 and flies to 19 destinations across India with 26 Airbus A320 aircraft. The airline offers plush leather seats, a diverse selection of hot meals and Red Carpet premium services. AirAsia India stands firmly on the pillars of its core values – Dare to Dream, Be Guest-Obsessed, People First, Safety Always, Make it Happen, One AirAsia, and Sustainability Spirit.

As an airline that has consistently embraced technology to deliver operational efficiency and enhance guest experiences, AirAsia India has introduced services to facilitate contactless travel like AirAsia Flyporter door to door baggage delivery services; Red Carpet Priority Check-In, Boarding, and Baggage services; AI-powered chatbot Tia and a host of other exclusive benefits on airasia.co.in

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

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

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

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

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

Why? 

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

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

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

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

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

Taking your customer experience to the skies 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion 

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

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