Many airlines handle series bookings manually despite global digitization. When a customer wants to book the same flight for multiple days, further steps are via emails, spreadsheets, and calls to make the necessary bookings. This creates a lot of challenges in managing and handling large volumes of paperwork. Many internal teams – revenue management and group sales desk are spending hours of work cross-checking the data, applying the best pricing methods, negotiating, and confirming the final series quote.
It typically takes 2 to 5 business days. Airlines will miss opportunities if the customers already got a quote from competitors that respond on time. Fortunately, there are automated solutions that can streamline the process and automatically process data. Airlines can significantly increase their processing time and reduce the turnaround time eliminating the challenges of the series bookings.
What challenges do airlines face when handling series bookings manually?
The volume of group booking requests is more than the department can handle manually. Adding fuel to the fire, airlines have to follow a turnaround time to give the best quote that fits the revenue goals.
Some of the issues are
- Takes 2 to 5 working days to give a quote
- Complexity in tracking customer history and behavior
- Slower process of collecting passenger names prone to errors
- Time-consuming process of updating passenger information and mismatches in data
- Identifying duplicate bookings
Automating these mundane tasks can potentially lead to increased revenue while also reducing the overwhelming tasks on busy days.
6 Key Benefits Airline Gets By Automating Series Bookings
1. Streamlined Booking Process
An automation solution will allow the airlines to handle and manage series booking inventory with optimized features that save time and revenue. Series booking requests are stored in a centralized solution making it faster and easier. There are no delays and human errors resulting in a smoother end-to-end flow.
2. 100% Policy Compliance
Airlines can configure the series booking policies that best align with the airline’s revenue goals. This includes policies such as regional or country-wise policies, cancellation policies, customer account types, fare quote setup, group limits, group passenger policies, and backed up with multi-level policies.
3. Smart Pricing Strategy
A series request is processed for 2 to 5 working days through a manual process, while an automated solution can give an instant quotation. With real-time data, the pricing strategy can be intelligently configured such as displacement cost-based pricing, special group fare-based pricing, competitor fare-based pricing resulting in the best pricing. This gives the best booking experience without delays or revenue loss.
4. Faster Negotiation
Airlines using an automated solution can approve, reject, send updated pricing, and partially approve a quote. With real-time data pulled from API, the team can cross-check the customer buying behavior and may even override a fare. It allows the group desk analysts, revenue managers, and passengers to negotiate within the system in just a few minutes resulting in a simpler, faster, and transparent process.
5. Reduced Turnaround Time
The manual process of managing and handling series requests has several layers of analysis such as buying behavior of the passengers, travel preferences, history, profile category, etc. With a smart solution, every 1 to 2-hour-long step can be done within minutes. The real-time data will allow the team to make informed decisions quickly and quote better pricing instantly.
6. Reliable Insights
The AI-Intelligent dashboard allows the airlines to foresee a bigger picture on how to strategize and make decisions. The group desk and revenue managers can analyze the history and behavior of group requests, along with monthly, quarterly, and yearly reports to decide what changes they have to make to enhance the revenue.
Conclusion
GroupRM is a reliable solution to automate and handle series bookings as it supports the airlines with real-time analytics. GroupRM can make the process 10x faster and easier, making it convenient and efficient for both airlines and group passengers.
Step into this new process of your series booking system and strategically upsurge your revenue. Contact our team to understand more about series booking – https://www.grouprm.net/contact/.
