FOCUS ON ANCILLARY REVENUE
Richard Williams looks forward to the 4th AI Mega Event in San Diego and talks to two companies working with airlines to enhance AR revenues
Pushing the AR boundaries
Affinnity's Sinead Finn and Kobie Marketing's Bram Hechtkopf talk to OnBoard Hospitality about the next phase in the development of ancillary revenue for airlines, railways and ferries
THE top AR event to look forward to is the 4th AI Mega Event on November 27-28 in San Diego. It incorporates three conferences: the FFP Loyalty Conference, the AMC Merchandising Conference, and the Co-Brand Partnerships Conference. Jay Sorensen of Ideaworks is moderating the AMC and is making the keynote presentation on ‘Ancillary Revenue innovation - how airlines worldwide can benefit’.
Other highlights are likely to be the Innovation Forum: ‘New ancillary revenue providers and strategies to take airline ancillary revenue to the next level’. This will be moderated by Sinead Finn.
After 13 years as director of commercial revenue at Ryanair, Sinead Finn has set up her own company, Affinnity, consulting on AR strategies for airlines. We asked her:
OBH: What is a typical breakdown of AR, between sales, commissions, FFPs, and advertising, for an LCC, and for a traditional airline? SF: This is different for every airline, because airlines operate very differently. Many airlines have bizarrely not fully recognised the benefits of AR.
Online ancillary revenue is really my focus, and many airlines do not maximise their revenue there because of huge concern about the brand, which is complete nonsense, to be honest. There are too many airline departments exerting a pull on AR: the IT department on what is possible, the Customer Services people on how the product fits the customer, and the marketing people on how it will affect the brand.
There are only a handful of airlines who are truly maximising their web presence and their
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www.onboardhospitality.com
"There are only a handful of airlines who are truly maximising their web presence and their booking flow"
booking flow - and this is what gives the scope for future growth.
The future for carriers with a more developed on-line ancillary platform, for example, is Internet advertising. You sell a skyscraper ad on your homepage, or more sophisticated, place ads in the booking flow, or ads on the boarding cards that the passenger prints out. Ryanair is pushing this further by using Google ads to advertise other airlines. This works as they will continue to win the business with the cheapest fare.
In the US Adara Media are partnering with airlines to pick up non-personally identifiable
passenger information through cookies. They are using it to push associated products to the passenger through different web channels. For example, a passenger books a flight to Rome, starts reading the FT online, and is targeted with a special deal for a hotel room in Rome. Many airlines are a long way behind with this, probably because of the baggage of their legacy structure. To get results quickly, it helps to partner with the technology people, Google, Yahoo, and Adara Media, who have a
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