October 2011
by Tim Catling
Historically airlines and airports knew surprisingly little about their customers. The classic Passenger Name Record (PNR) data given by a travel agent to an airline says little other than the basics of name, origin and destination. There is a reason for a check-in agent asking for your passport: they really have no idea who you are. As a consequence airport and airline systems and processes have been designed around the general not the particular. Whilst Frequent Flyer Programmes help an airline identify the few elite passengers, the rest of us pass largely as strangers in an anonymous crowd through terminal buildings.
However, advances in technology are starting to change this old paradigm.
The SabreSonic reservation system for example now has the ability to not just recognise gold card members but can help an airline develop a profile of any of its passengers based just on a mobile phone number, an email address or credit card number. With that profile comes a history of purchase and service data enabling the airline to tailor the service and push particular sales offers. Its Amadeus competitor Altea lets an airline make contextual decisions based on long term customer value and thus better handle disruption or upgrades. These advances give critical opportunities to airlines who otherwise struggle to differentiate except on price.
The BlueMotion tracking system enables an airport to monitor the unique serial number and track the position of any enabled Bluetooth device that is in range. By interpolating the position of the kind of device many of us carry, an airport is able to better manage passenger flows, unblock choke points, and understand the effectiveness of concession retail campaigns. This intelligence is available across thousands of potential customers to volume levels that were previously unimaginable.
Airlines and Airport are starting to know who and where you are. And it won't be long before they start making smarter decisions based on that information. In future we will be recognised as passengers and purchasers thus allowing interventions in three key ways:
- Service. Airlines and Airports will be able to adapt their processes to improve and personalise the service offering; to recover faster from a poor customer experience and to contextualise the response.
- Sales. Airlines will use a passengers profile to understand their historic purchases. As the flying product is increasingly unbundled, a key part of that history will be unique buying behaviour - whether it be the propensity to purchase an upgrade or to tailor an offer to a passenger's mobile device through near field communications.
- Security. Easier identity means earlier profiling and the ability to focus on those individuals who present the greatest risk and allow the rest to go more speedily on their way.
At Inter VISTAS we are working with winning Airports and Airlines to build these possibilities now into future designs.
Image Credit: Larry Johnson
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