In a multi-device world giving your customer what they want in record time will be the key to survival

In the airline space, ‘personalisation’ is an airline’s ability to successfully identify its end customer and their needs. An airline could do this is through the customer profile information saved in their frequent flyer programme. That’s easier said than done. While airlines may have rich information on their customers’ preferences, travellers don’t, as a rule, provide frequent flyer numbers when searching with an online travel agency or a meta-search provider, says Gianni Pisanello, director, airline distribution marketing, Amadeus.

So how then can the industry identify customers?

A growing number of internet users employ cookie blocking software to preserve their anonymity and the operating systems of many smartphones block cookies by default. The growing use of devices raises another issue. Cookies work best when consumers use a single device to access the web, and as consumers use a wider range of devices – desktops, laptops, smartphones and tablets the ability to accurately identify a user is getting harder.

“For travellers using a travel agency to make a booking, at the very least, the airline will know the travel agency office which the customer is using and the company they work for,” says Pisanello. Global Distribution Systems like Amadeus, Sabre and Travelport can share this information with airlines, that use the data to decide, in real-time, what level of availability they will offer.

Do it but do it quickly 

Another challenge is that once the airline system has identified the traveller, it must match that information with the traveller’s preferences. This must then be fed to the merchandising or pricing engine in order to deliver a customised response. “All this is possible today, but the challenge for the airline is to do it quickly enough to present the customer with an offer before they lose interest. In the web environment, customers will move on to a different website if they have not received a response within a few seconds,” says Pisanello. This is not without technical challenges, not least how to combine personalisation with caching technology.

At the inspiration level, when conversion rates are low, it is not viable to poll all possible airlines with a feed of information about the traveller’s profile or data and wait for each airline to return a tailored offer. As Pisanello points out, if we consider interlining, the complexity of which airline defines the rules for personalisation, applied across millions of possible flight options, is significant. “If we rely 100% on polling, returning a comprehensive set of search results will take minutes and be hugely costly for all parties, including the airlines,” he adds.

Right now, it is possible for airlines to customise the level of availability they present within the travel agency channel. Availability can be customised according to a range of rules such as ‘point of sale’ (that is, which travel agency is searching) and also the frequent flyer number, which provides a range of information on the individual passenger. This enables airlines to offer the last available seat on a flight only to their most loyal customers.

In spite of the challenges, developing personalisation technology is an important objective for Amadeus, and other GDSs. Sabre, for example, recently announced an agreement with AT&T to investigate how device-based location information services can help airlines, airport retailers and other travel-related companies deliver targeted services throughout a traveller’s journey. 

Be it for suppliers, or offline or online intermediaries, the entire sector is looking at how to strengthen initiatives pertaining to personalisation and there is everything to play for.