Tag: IBE

Long Time No See – Meet us at one of these upcoming industry events!

After a long period of limited personal exchange we are looking forward to the upcoming industry events where Travel in Motion will be present, such as IATA’s Digital, Data and Retailing Symposium in Madrid from 26th till 28th October, PROS Outperfom Virtual Conference which will take place from 16th till 18th November and  the World Aviation Festival on 1st and 2nd December in London. Please reach out to us to personally reconvene. See you soon!

 

Travel in Motion’s Fifth Birthday

The summer is coming to an end in our northern hemisphere and the summer holiday period has confirmed that air travel is on the raise, again. Within Europe, Northern America and China there have been plenty of leisure flights, and although we have not reached pre-COVID numbers, the trend remains positive and promising.

A lot is dependent on potential virus mutations and vaccinations, but also on streamlining the numerous different rules, regulations and processes for air travel. Examples like the IATA Travel Pass Initiative have shown that technology, especially ongoing digitalization of processes, can contribute to the restart of global air travel.

Thus, digitalization has become one of the top priorities for our industry community, and we at Travel in Motion are engaged in helping our partners to reach the next level of digitalized distribution, disruption management and airport operations.

We have helped our partners now for over five years – yes, TiM celebrated its 5th birthday, and we have enjoyed every single day within TiM and within our community.

We are looking forward to continuing our work with you for many more years to come, and perhaps we can meet at one of the upcoming industry events where Travel in Motion will be present, such as IATA’s Digital, Data and Retailing Symposium in Madrid from 26th till 28th October, the PROS Outperfom Virtual Conference which will take place from 16th till 18th November or the World Aviation Festival on 1st and 2nd December in London. See you there!

 

Season Break and new Co-Owners of TiM

Dear partners and friends

2020 has been a very challenging year for all of us. Our industry went through the worst crisis ever, with many airlines being forced to cease operations and countless people losing their jobs. However, much more importantly, some of us lost loved ones due to the pandemic. We cannot end this year without remembering them.

In crises and difficult times, it’s easy to tell who your true partners and friends are. It has been an invaluable and enriching experience for us at Travel in Motion in 2020. Although our business was also rather challenged, we still managed to have excellent exchanges, discussions and interesting projects with many of you – we were not let down, and we want to thank you all for this.

The new year is starting to look more promising: vaccinations might lead to an easing of the crisis, and we have good reason to believe that a recovery will come. We at TiM are looking forward to 2021, as we are convinced that aviation will remain one of the key industries in our global economy. This crisis has forced our industry to become more digital, agile and interconnected – attributes which are also the focus of our work. Thus, we’re already looking forward to working with as many of you as possible next year in whatever capacity we can support you.

As we are optimistic for the next year, and many to come, we have decided to set up Travel in Motion GmbH a little differently. We are proud to announce that Andrea Riesen and Boris Padovan have become co-owners of Travel in Motion, as they both share our long term vision and goals. As we continue to remain busy, having Andrea and Boris on board not only as team members but also as owners, shows our commitment and belief in our industry.
With these mixed emotions, the whole Travel in Motion team would like to thank you again for 2020 and wish you, your families, friends and colleagues a happy Season Break and a healthy, safe and prosperous New Year!

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Airline Digital Retail – Vendors’ View on Challenges and Opportunities of the COVID Crisis

September 2020 – The airline industry has been hard hit by the global Covid-19 pandemic. Airlines have grounded their fleets, or reduced their capacity by 60, 70% or more. Since March 2020, travel has drastically changed, and the market is very slow to recover. At the time of this blog post at the end of September 2020, we are seeing a very slow recovery in the global air transportation market. For some domestic markets, things look a lot better, especially for China where domestic travel is at over 90% of the capacity it was one year ago, thanks in large parts to their effective management of the pandemic as well as government stimulus to travel.

Basically, the airlines’ opportunity to sell travel and related ancillary services has become almost impossible. However, it is not yet time to give up. Governments have been helping airlines through loans, while the airlines themselves have been streamlining their operations and reducing their fixed costs and their fleets. They are also becomming innovative and creative, offering products which are pandemic-compliant, giving customers the opportunity to travel more safely, rebook when necessary and protecting their staff from direct interaction with customers where there are other possibilities. Two such examples are the sales of free middle seats and a charge for checking in in person at the airport. Now, while neither is new, both of these product have been given considerable boosts through the pandemic, and more airlines have decided to offer these as a result of Covid-19. Supporting the airlines through the crisis are also the technology solution providers. They too are suffering from the loss of key revenue streams, however, have an invested interest in supporting their airline customers in the recovery.

Travel in Motion took this opportunity to talk to five of the leading airline digital retailers to gain an understanding of how this pandemic is affecting them, and how they are helping their airline customers get through this. We also heard a lot of considerations around how this is affecting their own companies and their respective strategies and key learnings. Except for the last podcast, which was moderated by Boris Padovan, Principal Consultant at TiM, the interviews were conducted by Daniel Friedli, Managing Director of Travel in Motion.

A final session with all five participants will close this series of TiM’s podcasts. In this 45 minute “virtual” panel we will jointly reflect on the consequences of this global disruption and discuss learnings for the overall aviation industry. This podcast will be conducted after the five individual interviews have been published.

We kicked off our discussion with Jim Davidson, Chief Product Officer at Accelya. After the acquisition of Farelogix through Accelya, Jim has taken the challenge to work on setting up Accelya to offer end-to-end retailing, from offers to selling, delivery to settlement.
Our favourite quote from Jim: The concept of retailing is proven to be resistant even to the pandemic… the concept is still trying to match those services that are best equipped to the needs of the flying customer.” Listen to our interview with Jim.

In the second podcast, we discussed these topics with Sean Corkery, CEO of Datalex. Having gone through a large transformation programme in 2019, they had already set themselves up to be very efficient and delivery focused.
Our favourite quote from Sean:This is not a time for gain, this is a time for really underlining your value-add to your customers.Listen to our interview with Sean.

The third interview was with Bryan Porter, Chief Commercial Officer of OpenJaw Technologies. OpenJaw is in the privileged situation to have a considerable part of their business in China, in which the domestic market is recovering faster than anywhere else in the world.
Our favourite quote from Bryan: Reassurance has become the watch-word for recovery.Listen to our interview with Bryan.

PROSSurain Adyanthaya was our fourth guest. With PROS’ growing ecosystem from revenue management to airline digital retailing solutions, their view on the market, especially with the insights into their customers’ revenue management strategies, was very interesting.
Our favourite quote from Surain: The key to success for airlines is to be nimble and flexible. Things happen!

Finally, we spoke with Andy Kidd from SAP. Andy outlined how airlines, especially in Asia, have circled toward digital, and how this will benefit them in these challenging times. He further elaborates on how the customer experience is affected and can be improved with ONE Order.
Our favourite quote from Andy: The majority, if not all airlines, have a digital transformation programme but what we’ve seen in retail is that some companies have accelerated what was years into months…

For the final session we are looking forward to hosting Jim, Sean, Bryan, Surain and Andy. It will certainly be an interesting discussion and we hope that it will gain more insights for our industry community.

These podcasts will be released in the upcoming weeks, one per week, on Mondays. The first podcast will be released on Monday, 5 October. Each subsequent release will be available on the Travel in Motion website. If you would like to be notified of each podcast, subscribe to our newsletter here.

Airline PSS Decisions – Challenge and Opportunity!

PSS Decisions Airlines need to take

There is no airline which has not been hit hard by the current global health crisis. The results for the airlines are challenging and in many cases devastating. Based on all the challenges, it probably is not at the front of the CCO’s mind to think about the Passenger Service System (PSS) right now. Or, maybe for some it is. In many cases, stakeholders are now thinking about how they can make the airline more efficient and, amongst other things, automate more processes to cope with these kinds of situations and reduce costs. Also, with much of the initial hectic related to rebooking and refunds, alongside figuring out where the fleet is and should be going (and not going) now behind us, thoughts must be focused on the future of the airline.

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