1. Metasearch Engines / Aggregators
Metasearch Engines or Aggregators search various sites for the lowest fares. There are currently four major travel metasearch engines: Kayak (www.kayak.com), associated with AOL; Farechase (www.farechase.yahoo.com), part of Yahoo; Sidestep (www.sidestep.com), one of the first aggregators and Mobissimo (www.mobissimo.com), a newcomer with European roots.
Airfares (and rental car and hotel rates) vary between them depending upon the providers and websites associated with each of them. Many airlines don’t make their lowest fares available to aggregators and some lowcost airlines like Southwest and jetBlue do not share their fares at all with metasearch engines. These sites have taken off primarily in North America, but can be expected to grow in other regions.
Does your airline make its fares available to aggregators and how will further enabling the consumer to more easily obtain the lowest fares through metasearch engines affect airline yields?
2. Blogs and User Generated Content Sites
User-generated content sites like Tripadvisor.com, as well as blogs allow travelers to share their experiences directly with other travelers. Particularly in the hotel sector, travel user-generated content has exploded over the Internet- from blogs to Wikis user commentary with photos are superseding established websites and brands, eroding established travel guide sites, as well as established hotel and restaurant sponsored websites. Travelers themselves are now publishing real-time, illustrated and personal travel guides. Negative travel experiences are more likely to be shared than positive ones through user-generated content, meaning that the growth of this medium makes it more important than ever to ensure a positive experience for your customers.
What are bloggers and user-generated content sites saying about your airline?
3. Rich Media
Enabled by faster broadband Internet, rich media enables travel providers to leverage sound, animation, real-time video and interactive maps to more effectively expose online consumers to your product and brand. Rich media has begun to take-off in the hotel sector, but is not yet embraced fully by airlines.
Can your airline use Rich Media to increase sales and reach affluent technically savvy young consumers?
4. Integrated Travel Sites
As reported in the last edition of ENewsline, Google Transit (http://www.google.com/transit) enables passengers to enter the specifics of their trip: Where they’re starting; Where they’re ending; What time of day they'd like to leave and/or arrive and then uses all available public transportation schedules and information to plot out the most efficient possible step-by-step itinerary. Google is currently offering this service for the Portland, Oregon metro area, but plans to expand to cities throughout the United States and around the world.
Google Transit and similar integrated public transport websites such as Transport Direct in the UK ( www.transportdirect.info) may have a profound effect upon how we travel. Airlines and online travel agencies, such as Travelocity and Expedia, will likely facilitate their customers linking to such sites at the time they book their travel, greatly simplifying arriving at a new airport for the first time and likely increasing the use of public transportation from airports.
Can you airline link to an integrated travel site to provide your customers with a better travel experience?
5. eCRM
Involves knowing your customers and leveraging past trip patterns and past traveler behavior to predict future opportunities to inspire travel purchases. eCRM means anticipating what information travelers want and delivering it to encourage repeat and last-minute purchases. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) permits users to subscribe to their choice of content sources across the Web. Aggregation tools, including personalized start pages, permit travel suppliers to display summaries of these subscriptions, which update automatically when new information is available. RSS reduces the need for users to search multiple websites and makes it easier for travelers to receive only the information that interests them. Increasingly mobile phones, PDAs and iPods will be used in this process as they are ideal for receiving short and discrete hits of information.
Is your airline examining CRM software to maximize customer sales? Such software is available on-demand, making it affordable for even smaller airlines.
6. GNEs (GDS New Entrants)
ENewsline has covered extensively Boston Area-based ITA Software, Chicago-based G2 Switch Works and Miami-based Farelogix and their alternative lower cost distribution alternatives to the GDS. Marketshare of GNEs remains small, but is growing in North America. However, to date GNEs have largely failed to gain traction outside of North America.
Has your airline looked at the GNE alternative to reduce your distribution costs?
