Ai Editorial: As ancillary revenue soars, time to become more judicious
First published on 22nd July, 2016
Ai Editorial: United’s total ancillary revenue almost touched $6.2 billion in 2015. But as stakes get higher, airlines need to prepare better. Ai’s Ritesh Gupta assesses 5 areas.
Can an ancillary product be linked with loyalty? How to avoid the “clever” idea of opportunity cost pricing, say for a seat in the aircraft or lounge access? How can bundling and unbundling be linked with comfort and convenience?
Airlines are contemplating and probing issues around customer-centricity when it comes to ancillary revenue generation.
As IdeaWorksCompany and CarTrawler released 2015 Top 10 Ancillary Revenue Rankings, it was emphasised that ancillary benefits shouldn’t eclipse the core principles of customer experience that airlines have built their brands on. The opportunity is to deliver a personalised offering that complements their brand promise.
It’s getting bigger and bigger
In the era of data-driven merchandising and personalisation, stakes are much higher now.
According to IdeaWorksCompany’s latest ancillary revenue review of top-performing airlines, the top ten tally soared to nearly $26 billion in 2015.
Highlights:
· Top performer per passenger is Spirit. Even though the carrier’s systemwide total revenue per passenger was a very modest $119, the $52 earned from ancillary revenue represents a crucial 43.4% of Spirit’s total revenue per passenger. As per the revenue profile of Spirit, checked bags contributed 18%, online and call centre fee 14%, assigned seating 4%, sale of FFP points 3% and all other ancillary 4%.
The study asserts that a la carte methods have gained acceptance over the years, a trend exemplified by the fact that Spirit has risen from 5.5 million passengers in 2008 to nearly 18 million last year. For a carrier like Spirit, high passenger volumes and load factors enable them to sell more ancillary products and services, which in turn allow to reduce the base fare even further. In this category of ancillary revenue as a % of total revenue, Spirit was followed by Allegiant (37.6%) and Wizz Air (36.4%).
· Total ancillary revenue – United led this category with $6.2 billion, followed by American ($4.71 billion), Delta ($3.78 billion), Air France KLM ($2.16 billion) and Southwest ($2.11 billion). In all, there are 10 airlines over $1billion in the total ancillary revenue per year category. For their part, United has over the years grown their ancillary revenue per passenger by growing bag fees, developing their Economy Plus product, and stretching the revenue boundaries of the MileagePlus frequent flier program. Ancillary revenue per passenger in case of United has risen from $22 or so in 2008 to $44.16 in 2015.
Preparing for the future
Indeed ancillary revenue generation is an integral part of the business today, but airlines can’t afford to annoy the customer, and they also need to improve business processes.
1. Personalisation: The concept of ancillary products is common, but selling them in a personalised way is not. As Maria Cardenal, head of product development at Vueling Airlines asserted in a recent interview, selling ancillaries is about identifying a need in a particular moment. And doing it right. Because awkward personalisation can be worse than not personalising at all. Here is where big data comes into play. “So there is a need to use data effectively for personalization - collect enough data with enough quality, have the ability to draw the right inferences or customer intelligence, work out right tools to transform the data into personalised messages or experiences and must do it at the right time and in real time,” Cardenal pointed out. And while doing so, airlines need to counter the high cost of implementing personalization and assess customer acceptance level for personalisation.
2. Distribution: Airlines, OTAs and GDS companies are working on advanced merchandising capabilities including enhanced product information delivery via images, video etc. GDS companies have come up with graphically-rich workflow to support ancillary and branded fares sales. As IdeaWorksCompany’s president Jay Sorensen highlighted during our Ancillary Merchandising Conference in Barcelona in April, linking a la carte methods to GDS is the next revenue frontier. Quite often it is pointed out that ancillary or bundled products are not readily available when shopping through most travel agencies or corporate booking tools, but as Sabre recently told us, the team has made ancillary and branded fare content available through all points of sale that it develops.
3. Being flexible: In order to be flexible and astute with airline merchandising, there is a lot of scope for improvement as of today. If being flexible with the crafting of a new offering – say a new fare, a new ancillary product – can result in increased average order value or even augment the customer experience, then it would be a welcome change for any airline. But how much time does it take to do so? The technology is making rapid strides, and it is being highlighted that it shouldn’t take more than a day to 3 weeks (depending upon the fulfilment aspect of the new offering) to implement the same. Of course, testing is a vital component, but that shouldn’t restrain from trying out. The work that is done at the back-end to introduce a new offering should be done in a way that there is no amendment required in existing digital assets such as PC website.
4. Making it simple: Spirit asserts that the team allows customers to see all available options and their respective prices prior to purchasing a ticket, and this full transparency illustrates that total price, including options selected, is lower than other airlines on average. In fact, the airline ran a brand campaign in 2014 and 2015 to create awareness about how unbundled pricing model works.
Vueling’s Cardenal says the industry can look at improvement in easiness, convenience, relevance and self-sufficiency when it comes to selling ancillaries.
Also, airlines need to ensure page flow configuration on their sites results in control – the sort of products that one intends to sell, at what stage during the booking flow and also for the routes and a set of customers chosen. “Everything can’t be sold to the same set of customers the same way,” Justin Steele, Senior Director of Innovation, Switchfly.
5. Demonstrating value: One thing that I find annoying, from a traveller’s perspective, is the “clever” idea of opportunity cost pricing. Why should I pay an extra $10 for an economy class aisle seat just because the flight is not full today, knowing that a week ago a same seat on a fully booked flight did not demand any extra price? How can such opportunity cost pricing be justified?
Cardenal says the fundamental idea behind charging for a particular seat is not the opportunity cost, but the benefit of choosing where to sit and removing the uncertainty of where you will finally sit.
“Vueling passengers will have a seat assigned for free if they choose so or will be able to choose it themselves if either they pay for Optima fare or pay for Basic fare and then the seat they prefer. Either in an unbundled way or in a bundled way, there is value behind the possibility to choose. It’s the same simple principle for which you have different prices depending where you want to sit at the theatre or the Opera or a football match. You will have to pay extra if you want to sit in a privileged zone,” she said.
Gain an insight into latest trends at the upcoming Loyalty & Ancillary Revenue Conferences - 3rd Mega Event Asia-Pacific, scheduled to take place in Kuala Lumpur (23-24 August, 2016).
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