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.