Ai Editorial: Streamlining the booking flow for ancillary revenue generation

Optimizing merchandising on an airline’s website is not rocket science but it is easier to get it wrong than it is to get it right, says Rentalcars Connect’s Ady Guthrie

In how many clicks a travel booking should be completed? How much time would it take to do so?

These might sound like simple questions, but airlines continue to learn and test various designs and functionalities as they try to optimize the booking flow in order to optimize the ancillary revenue generation. Airline e-commerce executives dread the idea of poor execution of merchandising, be it for air ancillaries or non-air ancillaries. For them, of utmost importance is to offer an enticing design, aid users in the task they are about to perform, and eventually present them with results that are relevant and fine enough to complete a booking.

As an experienced professional, Ady Guthrie, Global Director – Strategic Partnerships, Rentalcars Connect says a key would be to get the basics right first and then build more sophisticated cross sell options down the line.

“It’s all about using the data you have to offer a relevant car at a relevant destination. It’s not rocket science but it is easier to get it wrong than it is to get it right, which some do. We’ve have spent years building the relevant B2C data and analyzing this to understand how to properly execute this throughout our partner integrations,” he says.

“Our platform is predominantly search-driven, with destination information directing the results. So where the customer is searching from and their eventual destination shapes up the search results. Sometimes previous searches aren’t that relevant, and if irrelevant results are shaped up by something that isn’t actually the intent of the customer, then it can hamper the user experience and the performance of the site. Our objective is to facilitate simplest and easiest user experience, and pave the way for conversion,” shared Guthrie.

So the focus is on offering relevant products and facilitating a quick purchase, be it for Rentalcars B2C (rentalcars.com) or B2B platforms (rentalcars connect).  

There is talk of real-time personalisation on the web. Merchants today are in the process of setting up an interaction timeline for each visitor and customer from the instance they visit a website. Once they have an “identifying” event then all of the rich anonymous behavior is incorporated into the “known” profile.  And then known and unknown site visitors can be served dynamic content. Guthrie acknowledged such developments, and says the level of sophistication also depends upon the industry. “I might log on to Amazon.com 50 times in a year, but a car rental site only few times in a year,” he mentioned, referring to apt utilization of resources. “But yes, destination content needs to be relevant, and there are certain areas such as these that we are looking at as well.”

Sustaining the booking flow

Patrick Dowling, Regional Director, Rentalcars Connect says the team tries to ensure its merchandising offers a seamless booking flow, along with a certain level of personalisation.

Citing an example, Dowling mentioned that if there is a PNR featuring a certain destination and it emerges that there are four people with four bags in total, it doesn’t make any sense to offer a car that won’t able to serve the basic needs of the journey. Other than relevancy, the design and functionality that at times are seemingly “cool” can actually derail the booking process. Guthrie cautions against “over-engineering” the whole exercise, and strongly recommends a quick response rate to testing in order to embrace the best features and design on the site.

It is also important to garner the attention of a flyer at the right time.

“(This can be done) partially by testing but also by building an understanding of which ancillaries convert for which destinations and for which customers.  Also, if you’ve offered a car twice already for example, then logic would dictate to offer another ancillary product to maximise the opportunity of earning some revenue even if it might not always be the most lucrative,” shared Dowling.

Fine-tuning the product

Sometimes even the intention of a supplier isn’t completely understood or customers just shy away from sharing extra information.

Citing an example, Guthrie mentioned that when customers were being asked to share their flight information in order to ensure that their car is available or waiting even if there is a delay, users were dropping out from the booking flow. The team at Rentalcars reassessed the situation and chose to introduce additional functionality to elicit such information. “We asked customers departure and arrival dates, and then there was a drop down to dynamically choose the flight number from the list of flights,” shared Guthrie.

Handling partner integrations

The company is certainly counting on its expertise it has developed from its B2C brand, RentalCars.com.

“We work with airlines partners to ensure the products offered for a certain destination are likely to be bought. For low conversion rate destinations, the cross –sell products could be insurance, hotels, extra luggage etc,” mentioned Guthrie.  Rentalcars Connect banks upon the repository of data and the intelligence that its B2C business has its disposal, and this also paves way for prudent product development as part of ancillary offerings. Guthrie also mentioned that the eventually this plays a strong part in any co-brand solution as well.

A case in point what needs to be shown to a Chinese customer in order to book a car rental is going to be different from a U. S.-based user.  As the team at Rentalcars experienced, one of the risks is that Chinese customers may not fully understand what they are and aren’t covered for when they drive in another country such as the US. So in case there is an accident with another vehicle and the occupants are injured, those legal claims can easily run into a hefty amount, unlike what Chinese customers would generally expect. So rentalcars.com has developed this know-how, and this in turn improves the conversion rate when the B2B division takes over the booking flow from its airline or any travel supplier.

“As we take all the learnings from rentalcars.com, where we conduct endless and robust testing and experimentation on both the booking flow and pricing (front end customer experience), we only roll out positive margin and conversion improvements to our partner solutions,” mentioned Guthrie.

He also referred to another crucial aspect.

“We try not to interfere with any partner integrations that have been tried and tested on rentalcars.com – why would we if it may negatively affect conversion and margin! We don’t change the platform that has been tried and tested but we do collaborate and tailor the integration based on the partners preference or requirements, we do believe in collaboration,” mentioned Guthrie.

Performance metric

So what’s the benchmark for success that an airline partner should typically look for – average order value or conversion rate when they look at the efficacy of a car rental partner/ solution in overall bookings?

Guthrie says the same varies depending on an airlines source markets and destination mix “but we nominally see PNR attach rates of between 1-4% and the conversion rates on our partner solutions tend to be higher than that on rentalcars.com as the customer is in a more purchase ready frame of mind”. 

By Ritesh Gupta

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