Discover the journey of this Indian carrier as they transitioned from facing challenges to embracing automation with GroupRM. Experience how they surpassed expectations by streamlining and automating their group booking processes, paving the way for unprecedented growth and efficiency. Witness a staggering 400% increase in group booking requests in just 3 months
From struggles to automation, see how a southeast asian airline improved their group booking processing time by up to 96X. The airline outperformed expectations by automating and simplifying the process with GroupRM.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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,
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.
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.
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.
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 reports | Present – Analyze the customer’s behaviors and preferences and create the right product. |
| Shop – Target personalized offerings based on current inventory, historical performance, and future forecast | Pricing – Use historical behavior and the current trend to forecast group materialization |
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Airlines worldwide have faced numerous data breaches, compromises, and loopholes resulting from outdated management systems and technical issues.
According to IATA, airline fraud costs approximately $858 million per year. Security threats come in various forms, including employee fraud, phishing schemes, fake customer accounts, fraudulent travel agencies, and triangulation schemes.
Ticket booking fraud directly impacts revenue and exposes vulnerabilities. Fraudulent activities in group bookings can cost airlines millions of dollars, which becomes unsustainable over time.
Airline employees who know the loopholes of the system will exploit the bookings for their personal benefits. The employees may book group tickets for their friends or family members at the expense of the airlines leaving no trace.
When a traveler requests a group quote, the unregistered travel agencies may book/cancel the flights, release fabricated stories, and have fake credit cards/ bank accounts. They impersonate the original and tie up with different travel agencies fetching their user accounts leading to personal information misuse.
This type of fraud is non-traceable and airlines will usually have no idea how attackers gained access to this information. With both ad hoc and group bookings done online, data leaks and misuse are susceptible to fraud and attacks. Airlines will mostly be in the dark on how long and what types of information they got access to.
Fraudsters steal unused loyalty points/miles from business travelers or affluent individuals and utilize them for their own benefit. Group bookings, which involve higher costs and consequently higher earned loyalty miles, result in substantial revenue loss for airlines.
A single-platform integrated booking system is so much easier as every group booking activity can be tracked and monitored. It is an end-to-end centralized system where group bookings are handled from start to end. An airline revenue management system also reports and detects any suspicious activities. Moreover, the airline staff has complete authorization control to stop or process any steps.
Group policies act as an extra layer of protection against any unfavorable activities to the airlines. Manual tracking of group policies is extremely difficult and vulnerable to many data points. A group policy engine will allow you to configure diverse group policies such as regional, request types, air routes, seasonal policies, profile types, etc., resulting in 100% compliance.
All the vulnerable points of the airline can be added to a multi-layer authentication or 2-step verification at certain points to prevent unauthorized usage. The airline can maintain the session limitation to terminate inactive sessions when not in use. The airline staff can fortify their security measures and block all the compromised emails while they can launch a full-scale investigation to ensure the safety of passengers and customers.
It is easier with the airline revenue management system to initiate remedial measures.
These three steps have the potential to prevent 90% of revenue fraud in airline group bookings, assuming a robust system is in place.
News of revenue fraud and system vulnerabilities spreads rapidly. Our airline revenue management solution, GroupRM, has been developed by travel tech experts at Infiniti Software Solutions, who have taken various security scenarios into account, including fake payment information, fraudulent travel agencies, scams, loyalty fraud, and safeguarding against 90% of revenue frauds.
Talk to our experts to know how GroupRM will protect the system – Schedule a demo.
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.
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
Automating these mundane tasks can potentially lead to increased revenue while also reducing the overwhelming tasks on busy days.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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/.
Agency wallets are a gateway to many untouched revenue opportunities for airlines. Airlines are returning to profitability in 2023, but the growth percentage is steep. According to travel experts, this market gap can be fixed by optimizing the revenue opportunities, especially with their tied-up travel agencies.
Why?
Travel agencies contribute almost 40% of the overall profit from travel agencies and 60% of the revenue from leisure and corporate travelers. Travel agencies serving different faces, cultures, and people, revenue opportunities, and payment preferences are expanded. With the world moving towards a decentralized payment system, trying to bundle it with centralized payments will result in missed revenue opportunities, especially with airlines.
An agency wallet is a flexible virtual payment option that stores and handles multi-currency payments worldwide.
Travel agencies will be most benefited from agency wallets due to the nature of their business as they are the main source of revenue for the airlines through group bookings, tourism, corporate travels, and leisure travels.
Let’s see the top 5 benefits that travel agencies get to experience when they use agency wallets,
Travel agencies cannot pay for their ad hoc and group bookings at the same time. In legacy systems, everything is handled via email, calls, and messaging with continuous follow-ups. Agency wallets have the flexible functionality to initiate many consecutive payments.
Wallets offer instant payments, refunds, cancellation options, coupon codes, and dynamic travel payments. Unlike bank operations which may take 3-7 business days to handle payments, agency wallets have no delays and can offer instant refunds wherever necessary.
Airlines will have the flexibility to connect with multiple booking engines without any hindrance in reconciling and payment issues. This will contribute a lot to the airline’s growth due to the extended revenue opportunities with multiple booking engines.
There is complete transparency in handling business payments from public travelers to travel agencies to corporate travelers. All the department managers can monitor and evaluate which product or service is the most profitable to the airline and how to leverage it.
Seamless payment options is a great advantage any industry can provide for its customers. Travel agencies can operate better with agency wallets featured with many new-age payment modes making them loyal and convenient to choose your airlines.
Agency wallets make travel agencies bring consistent business opportunities. Airlines could negotiate better deals with travel agencies by offering commissions or booking deals and payments done through agency wallets.
Travel agencies have a multitude of internal processes to deliver the best experiences to their travelers. Agency wallets help them reduce the time spent to initiate, and manage the payments allowing the travel agencies to get exceptional customer service.
There might be some disconnect with the travelers as wallets are already available in a lot of other industries. A wallet can straighten the payment process from external sources to internal sources. Airlines can use agency wallets to properly strategize and straighten the internal process.
Internal agreements or business flow might not have official documentation on agency wallets. Most airlines wouldn’t consider adding wallets as a part of their agreement, marketing, or growth plan. But that could change if wallets are properly utilized.
Payment innovation is a smart step to increase the bottom line of airline operations. We provide an agency wallet as a separate enhancer tool that serves as a one-point payment solution secured with trustworthy and safe policies benefiting the travel agencies who go with group bookings.
GroupRM provides a 360° group booking revenue management system assuring 23% of revenue growth from group booking.
After the Covid-19 pandemic-induced travel restrictions ended, millions took to the skies, determined to make up for the time they lost without a vacation.
This phenomenon, “revenge travel” can be utilized to recover airlines’ losses due to the persistent lockdowns around the world.
People are increasingly traveling in groups to their dream destinations and are more than willing to pay premium rates for a great travel experience.
However, this spike in demand isn’t something airlines are prepared to deal with due to their reliance on legacy group booking software. Manual means of processing group requests can’t keep up with the massive number of requests that are currently flooding help desks. Aside from that, airlines have no way of personalizing offers with dynamic prices and ancillaries, which means a lot of potential revenue is lost.
How an automated group booking solution can help airlines maximize revenue from revenge travelers
Airlines usually take 1 to 2 weeks to process, calculate and quote group bookings. The pricing isn’t available instantly and the fare quoted is not fool-proof from revenue leakages or losses. The quote then has to be negotiated manually before finalizing the amount.
When you have a group booking system, the users can get instant quotes via a web portal. The Intelligent AI-based algorithm can generate a quote considering various parameters instantly. The group travelers don’t have to wait for emails, calls, and messages, as every step from making the group request to receiving an optimal quote is automated.
Even if airlines manage to seize all their group booking opportunities, there will always be a question about the pricing strategies airlines use. “Does it maximize revenue?”, “Was the group pricing we quoted profitable?”, “Was the pricing too high/low?”.
The current airline group revenue management system isn’t fully capable of optimizing the pricing strategies for high materialization rates and profitability. But with a solution like GroupRM, which comes with real-time dynamic pricing based on factors, like load factor, competitor fare, etc., airline revenue managers can rest assured that the price they are offering is the best possible one that will lead to a booking.
After Covid-19, airlines understood that they needed to extend their services by offering personalized ancillaries to the relevant groups. In the current group booking system, ancillaries are manual and the travelers have to request seat upgrades, meals and baggage, and insurance details separately in emails or chats or by reaching out to the help desk or sales team. This could be a big inconvenience for group travelers and airlines may not be able to give a smooth booking experience.
To solve this, airlines can use an automated system for recommending ancillaries and allow passengers to add on whatever special purchase they want to make. Because of the impact of the pandemic, many people may be concerned about their health, so you can offer up ancillaries, such as travel insurance, telemedicine, etc., to bolster revenue. Providing such a personalized experience will also go a long way in helping the airline retain customers.
Group travelers will be best served using a secure and easy-to-use web portal for all their requests, booking, ticketing, and post-booking modifications, such as changing itineraries, adding ancillaries, etc. This will save them a lot of time and effort because the usual way of booking group tickets is quite tedious. You can expand your customer base by having a web portal with multiple language/ payment options.
The booking part alone isn’t the final step; airlines need to continue providing all the required support to the group travelers till their departure.
It is quite common to see the groups changing their dates, number of people, and destinations. Many steps are handled manually when it comes to upsizing, downsizing, dividing, and changing itineraries. Airlines doing all this manually will end up causing delays for the passengers and consequently bringing down the productivity of the help desk team.
Airlines can introduce automation into the process by using a solution like GroupRM. It can send out alerts, reminders for payment, name updating, etc., that will help group travelers planning trips post-COVID. Meanwhile, airlines can delight their passengers by letting them make their changes to the itinerary straight from a web portal rather than making them contact the help desk via email or phone.
Airlines have been missing out on the potential 28% rise in group booking revenue. With an automation solution like GroupRM, airlines can replace the inefficient process which results in revenue leakages. You can also personalize the flying experience of travelers looking to shake off the boredom from COVID lockdowns and make them lifelong patrons of the airline.
Given how the airline industry must contend with heavy regulation, wildly fluctuating fuel prices, and many more challenges that threaten it daily, they have strived to become masters at revenue maximization.
Everything from a bottle of water to a few extra inches of legroom on a flight has become subject to careful consideration when it comes to pricing. Airlines have even managed to compartmentalize the entire flight, splitting passengers into categories based on purchasing power to charge optimal rates for each person.
Further, airlines have automated nearly everything that happens after a person makes a booking, such as payment reminders, ticket generation, requests to update the passenger’s name, etc.
Despite all these advancements in automation and predictive technology, airlines have struggled to bring to group bookings the same convenience, personalization, and dynamic pricing that individuals get when they book a flight. As a result, airlines are losing their opportunity to increase group revenue by up to 28%.
Every aspect of a group booking, including offer creation, order creation, and post-sales support, is riddled with inefficiencies that cause revenue leakage, poor help desk productivity, and a subpar customer experience.
When a customer wants a group quote, most airlines have them send an email with their requirements. The airline cannot know how valuable the group is, so the email goes to the bottom of the pile. By the time the revenue management team, sales, or the help desk gets to it, the customer has most likely requested quotes from multiple airlines.
3 out of 4 times, the customer accepts the group quote from the airline that responds first.
The email-driven process also means that the airline has no way of knowing the customers’ buying history, level of urgency, purchasing power, ancillary requirements, etc., which leads to a generic offer.
Meanwhile, for the order to be created, the customer must go through the airline’s reservation system, which isn’t typically designed to handle the nuances of group bookings. The airline cannot quickly create PNRs with multiple group terms and conditions. Aside from that, the customer faces issues, such as difficulties in payment due to the size and complexity of the booking and the tiresome manual ticketing process.
Post-ticketing, the call centers that handle the customers’ calls have difficulty providing proper ancillaries or the ability to quickly modify or partially cancel the bookings, leading to poor customer experience.
The next decade belongs to the airlines that can reimagine the group booking process.
Given that premium corporate customers make many group bookings, airlines that prioritize modernizing the entire process to make it more personalized and convenient can expect a huge upside.
One of the best investments an airline can make in this regard is implementing an AI-powered group booking solution, like GroupRM, that can provide customers easy to use online interface to make their group requests with all the customizations they need.
The platform further equips you with the ability to provide customers with special group fares, direct confirmation of bookings, purchase specialized ancillaries, and, most importantly, make, modify, or cancel bookings via self-service.
Besides, the prices provided by the solution would be real-time fares that the customers can negotiate or accept via the same platform in a few clicks.
An airline in Southeast Asia saw revenue from retail groups increase from zero to $1.5M in 3 months with the implementation of an online interface for their passengers to make group bookings easily.
Further, payments can be made through multiple means, such as credit card, BSP, wire transfer, cash, etc., and an EMD can be generated against the payment. Additionally, the customers can update their group passengers’ names simultaneously without the airline having to follow up to get each one.
Due to the increased visibility and ease of booking provided by the group booking software, an Indian carrier saw its daily group requests increase from 800 to 4000 within three months.
As this unfolds, the airline’s revenue manager can track and manage all group bookings through a unified platform.
Through this automation of the order, offer, and post-booking management process, airlines can ensure optimal revenue, increased customer satisfaction, high efficiency by eliminating manual chores and being on top of all the relevant group booking metrics as well.
Over 20 airlines, both full-service and budget carriers, have employed GroupRM to reimagine their group booking process and consequently enjoyed stellar results. The solution paid for itself in a matter of weeks by providing a delightful booking experience to retail customers, corporates, and travel agency partners. Notably, airlines reported being able to tackle all the limitations that they had been facing with their previous group booking systems.
If, as a revenue manager, you are interested in providing your group passengers with transparent pricing, personalized ancillaries, customizable group requests & policies based on segment, and a hassle-free experience from requesting to the time of ticket generation, reach us for a demo.
At the end of 2022, long after the pandemic had been declared over in most of the world, airline revenue still hadn’t touched pre-covid levels.
It wasn’t even close; airlines had made at least $100 million more in revenue in 2019.
Largely, this shortfall has been attributed to airlines’ revenue optimization systems getting out of whack. The industry had no reliable historical data to make pricing decisions, given how everything was shut down for nearly two years.
Making “educated guesses” has unfortunately become the norm when it comes to pricing decisions, and it shows, especially with group bookings.
Airlines have witnessed record numbers of customers making inquiries for group bookings and backing out, saying the prices were too high. In other cases, revenue managers have been forced to make steep cuts to group booking fares to ensure the flight was filled.
Something is broken when it comes to airlines’ pricing methods for group bookings.
Group fares are notoriously hard to optimize; a ton of factors must be considered before arriving at a quote, and often, this takes an airline at least a week.
Within that period, 3 out of 4 customers lose interest in the airline. When the quote is finally ready, it ends up disappointing either the airline or group passenger because the fares are outdated by then.
Consequently, the need of the hour is an AI-powered system that can forecast customer willingness to pay, taking into consideration all the relevant factors, such as:
Using such factors, an AI system can constantly test and optimize pricing strategies to maximize revenue, repricing seats in real-time based on passenger willingness to pay. The goal is to find optimal prices for each passenger while ensuring the aircraft is filled.
Notably, dynamic pricing by forecasting customer willingness to pay with AI can improve group fares by at least 8 to 10 % over time and provide airlines with the following benefits.
The sales and revenue management team may often be at crossroads because they have seemingly different goals. The former may look to increase the load factor at any cost, while the latter may be looking to onboard passengers for the maximum possible fares, leading to conflict between the sales and revenue management teams.
However, with intelligent pricing, both teams can rest assured that the group passengers are paying the best possible fares without the risk of them abandoning the booking. Consequently, the flight will be booked ahead of time, and the airline is assured of the fact that the maximum possible revenue has been generated from each group passenger.
Typically, group quotes take up to a week to create, with the sales and revenue management teams engaged in a back-and-forth regarding the best fares. However, with real-time dynamic pricing that considers customers’ willingness to pay at that moment, the quote is ready in a matter of seconds, leading to a much higher chance of the customer accepting the offer from the airline. The customer is delighted with the quick turnaround time and seamless booking experience.
With an AI-based system in place to generate the prices for the group passengers, there is heightened transparency. No individual revenue manager can bypass airline policy with regard to discounts or other aspects of the booking, leading to a high degree of impartiality when it comes to making offers to potential customers.
Not all group passengers have the same level of urgency, budget, etc., to make a booking. If you have a system in place that can differentiate between customer segments and offer personalized quotes, you have the recipe for optimizing revenue across each of your customer segments.
For instance, the system can recognize that a flight carrying mostly business travelers is in high demand during a particular season or time of day and alter prices accordingly to optimize revenue.
When seats are in high demand, airlines can leverage predictive technology to offer up the seats to groups who are most likely to pay the highest fare. Such predictions are made by the AI, considering the customers buying history, origin, destination, departure date, travel agency, type of travel, etc. This move leads to a reduction in the spoilage of seats, an increase in materialization rates, and a boost in revenue per passenger as well.
GroupRM is a valuable tool for airlines looking to forecast group passengers’ willingness to pay and increase revenue. By analyzing customer data and utilizing predictive analytics, GroupRM allows airlines to make informed pricing decisions and create customized group travel quotes that appeal to their target audience.
Additionally, the platform’s ability to optimize capacity utilization and streamline the group booking process can lead to higher materialization rates and overall revenue growth for the airline. Overall, implementing GroupRM can be a strategic move for airlines looking to improve their group sales performance and drive business success. To see the solution in action, reach the GroupRM team for a demo.
