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.
