6 Key Benefits Of Automating Series Bookings For Airlines

6 Key Benefits Of Automating Series Bookings For Airlines

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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/.

How Agency Wallets Can Help Airlines Handle Payments Flexibly

How Agency Wallets Can Help Airlines Handle Payments Flexibly?

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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.

What challenges are faced by travel agencies without an agency wallet?

  • They cannot initiate a single payment for ad hoc and group bookings which takes a lot of manual effort and time from the revenue team
  • Ability to handle and offer different types of customer needs namely, group travelers, corporate/business travelers, and leisure travelers
  • Providing payment flexibility in dealing with holiday management, booking prepayments, and payment installments
  • Determining the ways to expand the revenue opportunities for each customer

What challenges are faced by airlines without an agency wallet?

  • Disconnected payment environment, user journeys, and revenue systems leading to revenue loss and leakages
  • No internal flexibility to strategize and streamline the payment system for travel agencies, corporate managers, and general customers
  • Finding ways to fully utilize the back-office operations
  • Less progression, innovation, and providing various payment options

What are the benefits travel agencies will get when they use agency wallets?

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,

● Multiple payments at the same time

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.

● Smooth payment modes

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.

● Integrations with multiple booking engines

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.

● Easier calculations for the accounting team

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.

● Great customer experience

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.

How can airlines serve better with an agency wallet?

● Negotiate better deals with travel agencies

 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.

● Serve beyond satisfactory customer service

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.

● Straightened out internal processes

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.

● Stakeholder, airline system and agreements alignment

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.

Conclusion

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.

How Airlines Can Capitalize “Revenge Travel” With A Group Booking Solution

How Airlines Can Capitalize “Revenge Travel” With A Group Booking Solution

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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

1. Instant Quote for All Group Bookings

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.

2. Optimal Pricing for Group Bookings

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.

3. Personalizing Ancillaries for Group Travelers

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.

4. Self-Reliant, Fast, and Secure Web Portal

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.

5. Making The Post-Booking Process Effortless

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.

Conclusion

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.

Offer And Order Management Challenges Holding Back Airlines’ Group Booking Revenue

Offer And Order Management Challenges Holding Back Airlines’ Group Booking Revenue

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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%. 

Why legacy offer and order creation methods aren’t doing airlines any favors

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.  

What should airlines prioritize to maximize group booking revenue?

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. 

Conclusion 

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.

Maximizing Revenue With AI Forecasting Group Passengers’ Willingness To Pay

Maximizing Revenue With AI: Forecasting Group Passengers’ Willingness To Pay

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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. 

How AI can cause a turnaround in airline fortunes

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:

  • Booking data: By analyzing data including the size of the group, the destination, flight load factor, customer buying history, and the time of year, AI algorithms can predict how much a group is willing to pay for their travel. 
  • External factors: Armed with tons of data, AI systems can even take into consideration external factors, like economic conditions, competition, and market trends.

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. 

Reduce conflict between sales and revenue management teams

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.

Excellent customer experience

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. 

Enforce airline policy effectively 

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.

Effectively target different market segments

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. 

Improve process efficiency

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.

Conclusion 

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. 

How Airlines Can Provide Exemplary Post-Booking Support For Group Customers

How Airlines Can Provide Exemplary Post-Booking Support For Group Customers

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For a revenue manager, there’s probably no greater joy than taking a group quote to the booking stage. 

However, lacking post-booking support can and has often unraveled all the great work that the airline help desk, sales team, and revenue management professionals have put into making the passengers accept the booking and pay a competitive group fare. 

Complete chaos could ensue at the drop of a hat. An airline route may get disrupted due to bad weather. A passenger may change his plans and want to travel on a different date. Another may want to make changes to their itinerary.

Pretty much anything could happen, and airlines are woefully unprepared for the massive number of group passengers flooding their support systems in need of post-booking support.

But why is that the case even though airlines spend millions on their IT systems each year? 

Challenges in providing post-booking services to group passengers 

Even now, group passengers’ only option when it comes to accessing post-booking support is call centers. The passengers must reach out to the call centers via phone calls or emails to raise their requests manually, and most likely, they must depend on non-airline industry professionals to help them make changes to the itinerary, cancel their bookings, or add ancillaries.

Given the time-sensitivity of these requested modifications and the huge amount of cash involved, customers can be incredibly frustrated by slow or generic responses from the airline. 

Because post-booking support is still handled manually by the airline or partner call centers, they may have a hard time keeping up with support requests coming around the clock. 

Also, the fact that the airline employees in the revenue, sales, or help desk team are occupied with mundane tasks, such as itinerary changes, name updating, etc., brings into question how productive they are. Additionally, airlines’ failure to quickly address cancellation or ticket modification requests can lead to poor customer experience, which will drastically affect the carriers’ ability to bring in repeat business. 

However, the worst issue is the revenue leakage from airlines not being able to provide personalized ancillaries to individual group passengers once the booking has been made. Having to reach out manually for each customization of the booking may leave passengers dissatisfied and lead to the airline losing revenue by not being able to upsell special meals, pre-paid baggage, in-flight Wi-Fi, etc.

The simple fix to airlines’ post-booking woes 

Providing self-service options to your customers and automating whatever is possible is the way to go for making your post-boking process a delight for customers and a revenue winner for the airline.

With the right technology partner for providing post-booking support, airlines can allow customers to make modifications on their own. If a solution like GroupRM is put in place to help with group passengers’ post-booking requests, they will be able to effortlessly change date/ flight time, upsize, downsize, split the PNR, and cancel their group bookings, requesting a refund without the hassle of going through a call center. 

Besides, they will be able to use an online interface to access personalized airlines ancillary inventory, including: 

  • Travel Insurance
  • Tour packages 
  • Baggage services, such as baggage claim tags, baggage insurance, etc. 
  • Pre-boarding, wheelchair assistance for passengers with disabilities
  • Loyalty program memberships
  • Lounge access 
  • Priority boarding 
  • Meals 

In addition, airlines using automated technology for providing post-booking support have a major advantage when it comes to servicing group passengers during flight disruptions. They can send out automatic alerts regarding changes in flight timings or outright cancellations due to factors, such as bad weather. The group customers can easily rebook/ cancel their flights with a few clicks using channels, such as chatbots or the airline website. 

Undoubtedly, this ability of passengers to access self-service throughout the year at any time of the day can lead to the airline saving substantially on support staff or call center bills. 

Another area where airlines can up their post-booking game is the tedious name-updating process. Airlines can empower their travel agent or corporate customers with the ability to update all the group customers’ names on their own by bulk uploading the same without having to depend on time-consuming emails or calls. Notably, the names of the group passengers can also be modified after the booking has been made, if the airline has the right technology in place. 

Conclusion

Automating and allowing for self-service when it comes to post-booking requests can bring numerous benefits to airlines. It will lead to heightened efficiency, accuracy, customer satisfaction, and cost savings, which will help airlines stay competitive in a crowded market. One solution that can help airlines to automate this process is GroupRM, a platform designed specifically for the post-ticketing needs of airlines catering to large numbers of group passengers. With GroupRM, airlines can streamline the post-ticketing process, reducing reliance on manual labor and improving the overall customer experience.

By implementing GroupRM, airlines can take a major step towards improving their post-ticketing process and better serving their customers. Reach us for a demo to learn more. 

How Airlines Can Eliminate Duplicate Group Booking Requests

How Airlines Can Eliminate Duplicate Group Booking Requests

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As the pandemic’s influence on the airline industry fades in the background, a new situation has emerged.

With skyrocketing demand for flight tickets, airlines increasingly must deal with the scourge of duplicate bookings from travel agents, retail customers, and corporates.

Given that airlines lose an estimated 3% of group revenue from these duplicate bookings, they need to be aware of the following:

  • What constitutes a duplicate booking
  • How does a duplicate booking happen
  • What are the problems associated with duplicate bookings
  • How to tackle the issue without upsetting travel agents, retail, and corporate customers who are just looking for a bargain

What are duplicate bookings?

Everyone, including travel agencies, corporates, and groups of tourists, is looking for the cheapest possible fare. Nowadays, people who understand how airline pricing works have a trick up their sleeves, costing airlines millions of dollars in group booking revenue. Given that airline fares vary depending on the market demand, time of booking, and other factors, travel agencies, retail customers, and corporates look to game the system by making multiple reservations for the same itinerary. They hope that they will get an acceptable quote if they make enough bookings.

When the same person/ group ends up holding 2 or more confirmed reservations for the same itinerary, the airlines end up with multiple blocked but unpaid seats, a nightmare for revenue managers.

In several instances, the airline’s passenger service system (PSS) may notice the discrepancy and cancel the latest booking. However, this isn’t always the case, given that similar bookings could be made from different names or via different channels.

How airlines can detect duplicate group bookings in real-time and cancel them

Given the sheer volume of bookings made, airlines have an uphill task combating the issue of duplicate group bookings.

Attempting to manually verify each group booking can be incredibly taxing, not to mention highly ineffective. Many airlines now have an email that customers can reach out to when they make a duplicate booking.

But what if the travel agency or retail customer made the booking on purpose?

Even if customers voluntarily reach out, airlines’ group desks must comb through countless emails to identify and cancel duplicate reservations. Making matters worse, the airline now must find new passengers for the vacant seats.

This is where an automated group booking solution like GroupRM comes in.

It is worth mentioning that such a solution can weed out duplicate group booking requests by automatically checking all the bookings for similar email ids, origin and destination, number of passengers, travel date, date of raising requests, etc.

If a duplicate booking is suspected, it is flagged so that the group desk can verify if there is any discrepancy before canceling the extra reservation. Once duplicate group bookings have been identified, airlines have several options.

  • The airline can confirm the reservation that was made first.
  • Alternatively, if different travel agencies have booked seats for the same group of passengers, the airline can accept the booking from the travel agency that has the best relationship with them. This could mean that the selected travel agency has brought in the most revenue for the airline, they have been loyal to the airline for many years, or that they are willing to pay higher fares for priority when it comes to bookings.
  • There is also the possibility of allowing the travel agency or retail travelers to get the booking based on who accepts the quote from the airline first.

When airlines can identify duplicate group requests automatically, they can get a better grip on which routes and markets are most likely to be plagued with this issue.

Moreover, if the airline finds that a travel agency is repeatedly engaging in raising duplicate requests, they can restrict the agent’s access to their inventory. Case in point, a South Africa-based airline that used GroupRM safeguarded over 8000 seats annually from travel agents engaged in practices such as raising duplicate reservations.

Another great benefit is that airlines can maintain a high level of customer satisfaction by accurately identifying duplicate group booking requests. Doing the process manually can lead to genuine group customers getting snubbed, as airline group desk employees may mistakenly cancel group bookings from people with similar names, thinking it was a duplicate request.

Conclusion

Duplicate requests from group customers and travel agents are a significant pain point for airlines, especially when bookings are at an all-time high. Spending even a few hours manually dealing with duplicate requests can drain resources for the group desk, revenue management, or sales team. Instead, airlines can switch to an automated solution like GroupRM that can identify duplicate bookings with high accuracy by analyzing multiple factors in seconds.

Reach out to our team to see GroupRM in action.

How GroupRM Can Help Airlines Modernize Their Group Booking Process

How GroupRM Can Help Airlines Modernize Their Group Booking Process 

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In recent years, airlines have increasingly embraced customer-centricity with dynamic and personalized offers. 

However, airlines are struggling to transition to the modern retailing landscape, especially with group bookings, due to an overreliance on legacy systems. 

Legacy Group Bookings— Airlines’ One-Way Ticket to Revenue Leakage and Poor Customer Experience

Typically, group bookings are made by customers over weeks with Google Forms, lengthy email exchanges with the sales/ revenue management teams, or phone calls to call centers. 

With airlines desperate to find new avenues of growth and revenue, legacy group booking methods are casting a cloud over the industry’s future.

Traditional ways of acquiring and servicing group passengers come with the following drawbacks:

  • Processing a group request over call or email takes weeks.
  • Reliance on distribution channels and travel agents with high commissions leads to lower revenue for the airline despite sky-high ticket prices.
  • Airlines cannot personalize offers or provide dynamic quotes 
  • Customers can’t purchase ancillaries because legacy distribution systems only allow airlines to display airfare and schedules. 
  • Airlines can’t offer customized terms and conditions based on the customer segment.
  • Manual ticketing makes payment collection, PNR updating, name updating, etc., a nightmare.
  • Post-ticketing services, such as canceling and modifying tickets, are time-consuming.

How GroupRM helps you navigate these challenges

GroupRM is an AI-powered solution for airlines to manage group bookings seamlessly, offer a differentiated “experience” rather than just selling flight tickets, bring down distribution costs, and increase revenue with dynamic pricing.

GroupRM capabilities

Offer Management

GroupRM allows you to identify the customer with their buying habits. Having identified the customer, you can offer a group quote with dynamic pricing instantly based on their purchase history, competitor rates, load factor, pre-set policy, etc.

This reduction in the turnaround time for delivering group quotes is especially valuable, given that 3 out of 4 group customers accept the first quote they receive. 

Importantly, you can offer personalized ancillaries to the customer, delivering a “shopping experience” guaranteed to significantly increase their satisfaction with the booking experience. 

Automating the offer management process with instant, optimally priced group quotes and ancillaries will save the revenue manager’s time, boost the materialization rates, and ultimately increase the airline’s revenue.

Order Management

The group customers benefit from an easy-to-use web portal where they can book, modify, or cancel their tickets.

Customers have the luxury of negotiating group fares in the same portal. Once the airline provides them with an acceptable quote, the customers can accept the fare quickly, make payments, get their PNR and tickets issued, and update their names.  It is also worth mentioning that the customers can request modifications to the ticket, including upsizing, downsizing, and changes to the itinerary.

Group policy enforcement

Airlines can set up customized markups and commissions for travel agencies and corporate clients, boosting revenue. Airlines can also configure specific cancellation and booking policies for each type of group based on the country or region, the date of departure, etc. 

Importantly, after a booking is made, and the group customer or travel agent has made the partial payment, the solution can send payment reminders, reminders to update the passenger’s name and other details, etc. This ensures that the sales or revenue management team doesn’t constantly follow up with the customers for these trivial issues. 

Passengers often get quotes from multiple travel agents, so airlines provide different quotes to the same customer via different travel agencies. The group policy enforcement capabilities of GroupRM can play a crucial role in weeding out these duplicate requests coming from travel agencies.

Automating series bookings

Series bookings are group bookings pre-purchased by a travel agent regularly on the same flight. For instance, travel agents can tell the airline they want 20 seats on a flight from London to Madrid every Saturday for the football season. This type of booking is done when the travel agent or tour operator knows there will be predictable demand for a particular period, and they don’t want to make group bookings repeatedly. Tour operators who handle large volumes of pilgrims or travel managers making a reservation for a work conference can also make use of this functionality.

In all these instances, the travel agents can self-book series inventory. Instead of making multiple group bookings, which is a hassle when managing groups with multiple departure spots, the travel agent can raise a single request with all his requirements met. The agent can customize details including the number of seats, origin and destination, and the expected fare, and raise the request. The airline revenue management team can quickly evaluate the request to accept or deny it fully or partially. The airline can even negotiate the rates for the entire booking or various groups with the travel agent.

Based on the relationship with the travel agent, the airline can even offer special prices that incentivize further booking.  Through these series bookings, the airline can ensure that the flight is reasonably filled well in advance and that they get substantial money to fund their operations beforehand. 

This automation in raising series requests saves everyone involved a lot of time because previously travel agents had to call or email the airline help desk or a call center and make all the bookings manually.

Conclusion 

Depending on legacy processes for pricing, offer creation, and group booking processing is a massive drain on your resources, and it is also guaranteed to leave your passengers dissatisfied. The distribution cost is also exorbitant, given how much legacy reservation systems and travel agencies charge. 

As an alternative, you can embrace group booking automation, offer, and order management software, GroupRM, which has helped many of our clients get up to a 28% rise in group revenue.

The software helps airlines provide group customers with a personalized, cost-effective, and memorable flying experience. It further empowers airlines to offer their travel agency customers special fares and an effortless series booking experience. Schedule a demo to speak with our experts to see how GroupRM can help your airline. 

Breaking The Myths Of Group Booking

Breaking The Myths Of Group Booking

by with No Comment Blogs

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.

How-airlines-can-reduce-distribution-costs-and-win-more-corporate-customers-with-a-next-gen-direct-booking-system

How Airlines Can Reduce Distribution Costs And Win More Corporate Customers With A Next-Gen Direct Booking System

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Over the last few months, corporate travelers have increasingly been taking to the skies in numbers that aren’t that far from pre-pandemic highs. 

The Wall Street Journal notes a steady uptick in corporate travel transactions since early 2022, especially from small and medium-sized businesses. Notably, the demand for corporate travel shows no signs of slowing down, presenting an immense opportunity for airlines to capitalize on this highly lucrative customer segment.

Every airline executive knows that acquiring more corporate customers, providing them with a memorable, frictionless experience, and optimizing the revenue from each of these passengers is mission-critical, given the beating the sector took in the last two years of sustained lockdowns. 

But is the airline industry capable of making the most of this resurgence in the number of corporate customers?

Legacy corporate booking solutions—airlines’ one-way ticket to revenue leakage and poor customer experience 

Airlines are subjected to high Global Distribution System (GDS) fees when they make their inventory available to travel agents and corporates through the distribution network. 

Aside from that, the GDS only allows airlines to share prices and schedules, leaving them unable to upsell with ancillaries, such as travel insurance, checked bag, priority bag drop, lounge access, priority check-in, etc.  

It is further worth noting airlines reliant on the third-party distribution of tickets to corporate customers can’t offer dynamic ticket prices and packages based on the customers’ purchase history and personal information. 

Making matters worse, airlines that rely on agencies like Travel Management Companies (TMCs) to get clients must pay exorbitant commissions, bringing down the carriers’ revenue from business travelers. 

As a result of all this reliance on external parties to distribute their inventory, airlines have no control over the revenue from this crucial segment. 

Reimagining corporate booking with a next-gen direct distribution platform 

To overcome all the pitfalls of the traditional corporate booking system, airlines desperately need a direct distribution system that offers an end-to-end self-service portal for corporates to seamlessly book tickets across multiple channels by integrating with the airline’s passenger service system and corporate Human Resources (HR) software. 

Such a solution will drastically transform the corporate customer experience, given that the business travelers can get ancillaries, discounted tickets due to non-reliance on the GDS, and further ensure that all their company policies are followed—all in a single platform.

Crucially, airlines will be able to handle multiple corporate accounts with the solution and provide their customers with curated offers and travel packages, leading to higher retention rates. Another way airlines can utilize such a solution to bolster corporates’ favorable view of them is by offering loyalty programs, the ability to book tickets in multiple languages, multiple currency options, etc. 

With the platform in place, airlines can potentially save millions of dollars by distributing their content directly to their target audience instead of depending on the GDS or travel agents. Business travelers will also enjoy the convenience that a direct distribution solution offers; corporate staff can book tickets straight from the airline, get approval from their management, and issue the ticket directly or via a travel management company within seconds. 

Since it is a self-service platform that supports mobile and desktop, airlines will have an easy time onboarding more corporates. Also, airlines can delight customers by bundling and unbundling fares, setting up specialized cancellation policies, allowing them to create and manage PNR directly, and enabling them to reschedule as well.

In addition, airlines can draw up pricing agreements with companies or groups of companies that belong to the same customer segment. Upon finalizing the fare, customers can access the booking portal to purchase inventory at the negotiated discount prices directly. As a bonus, the corporate can maintain a direct relationship with the airline, leading to better deals. 

However, the biggest benefit is providing interactive reports to your customers that outline how their business travel program is progressing. Details include whether employees adhere to the company’s business travel policies, how much is being spent, what trips need to be approved, etc. 

Conclusion

As business travel demand soars, airlines need to immediately figure out a way to provide their corporate customers with a direct booking tool that is cost-effective, easy to use, and personalized. With a solution like AgencyDirect, airlines can offer customers unparalleled ease in managing travel policies, self-booking & ticketing across multiple platforms, and trip approval workflows. The airline can also rake in unprecedented revenue due to the increased ancillary sales, distribution cost reduction, and betterment of customer experience. To witness the solution in action, schedule a demo by emailing marketing@infinitisoftware.net