As we enter 2023, the global airline industry continues with raised hopes to regain its benchmark performance to pre-covid levels but set with new retail standards; Airlines must gain traction from a digital perspective suited to today’s expectations of passengers.
The airline industry has changed dramatically during the last several decades, and before COVID-19, travel and tourism had become one of the most important sectors in world economy. 1.5 billion international tourists travelled abroad in 2019, but in 2020, international arrivals had dropped to a 74% decline.
The impact has accelerated a global surge of digital interaction across every demographic and has become embedded into daily life, dominating the customers’ interaction with brands and services. While the retail segment has witnessed the most change, this impact has accustomed customers to seamless personalised experiences that provide expanded choice, tailored options, and discounts. In a world where the customer has the power, how can the airline industry improve their customer experience and reduce the risks of long-term threat to their revenue streams?
We recognise that traditional retail formats and sales strategies built on impulse purchases onboard risk being undermined by digitalisation. That’s why we strive for, and support full business transformation, working closely with our customers to deliver success and new levels of profitable growth.
While Clarity Inflight-Retail (IFR), by Data Clarity, a worldwide software and data services provider, is brand new to the market, we’re supported by Dnata, the leading provider of inflight services to the world’s airline customers. The long history and experience with Dnata supports our company ethos of delivering real value to an organisation, manifesting into the continued expansion of our product development, and this year, accomplishing ClarityIFR that delivers a world-class passenger experience, from pre-order to point-of-delivery service, underpinned by integrated supply-chain management. Explore the capabilities of our product here.
With an incredibly skilled technical team, this means we can contribute to impactful changes to an airline’s performance – creating significant ancillary revenue opportunities and fulfilling the needs of both the airlines and their managed agents in meeting the high expectations of today’s digitally enabled passenger.
How airlines survive and thrive now and for the future will be established on how well they generate revenue and the delivery of customer service. Why? Because digitalisation helps improve customer control, and in turn, customer satisfaction. Therefore, adopting a versatile digital platform will enable airlines to have better control of their customer data to correspond to passenger expectations and renovate from flight-centricity to customer centricity.
Airlines already hold access to a great deal of data that’s enriched with behavioural insights from individual passengers, and by prioritising data collection and analysis, they’ll respond to market trends and customer needs by constructing relevant and targeted best offers. The more convenience for passengers, means better conversion of sale.
ClarityIFR attains real value out of passenger engagement driven from the data created; using an integrated approach to sourcing, developing, and managing the supply of Food and Beverage and duty-free items for airlines to unlock buying behaviours and meet customer demand, ensuring the right product is available at the right time, through the right channel.
Travel retailing that’s powered by offers and orders allows airlines to become increasingly sustainable. Over the years, airlines have faced stiff challenges in reducing their large carbon footprint. That’s why, our efforts are to support a zero-waste strategy following our desired ambition to prioritise pre-order selection, and tailored offers to ensure the optimisation of sourcing and loading of the right product, is for the right flight and customer. Catered by embedded artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, to calculate the supply of product demand based on demographic, location and flight destination sets to achieve low waste rates and weight onboard, that thereby cuts fuel consumption.
Our approach is based on key fundamentals where we look to achieve revenue growth and reduce costs for our customer, and to offer our customers’ customer greater flexibility of choice to optimise their travel experience, all while reducing emissions and decrease waste.
Many airlines acknowledge to look to digital solutions to drive future performance; however, it can be an intimidating challenge. Rest assured, it’s the right steps to reinvent themselves from sellers of seats to digital retailers.
For more information, or to start your digital transformation journey, contact us today.