Air passengers are becoming consumers. It reflects that the global aviation industry is changing its mindset on passenger service and product positioning. Connecting every touch point of air travel through technological innovations and mobile devices will elevate travel experience and take the industry into a new form of marketing in the digital era.

Airlines around the world are carrying out digital transformation of their organization structures and operation procedures to enhance the entire travel journey for customers. How will American Airlines, as the world’s largest carrier by passenger number, take the lead in this digital transformation?

Centered on social media and big data, China’s largest low-cost carrier Spring Airlines has built a marketing matrix featuring cost-effective technological innovations. In 2017, the airline had 91.7% of its total sales from online direct channels (including its flagship stores on OTAs). How does Spring Airlines inspire the aviation industry? What insights do they have for future airline marketing? 

This past year has seen considerable activity in airline travel distribution in what has been an effort for many airlines to initiate a change to a more retail-focused behaviour. This is not a change forced by airlines, it is brought upon airlines by consumers, digitization and the retail market. With technologies such as artificial intelligence, cognitive intelligence and machine learning are on the rise, and airlines started to leverage segmentation, personalization and contextualization to create offers, what is like to happen in airline retailing in the next twelve months?

From official websites, mobile applications, flagship stores on OTA platforms, to WeChat platform and Mini Programs, airlines have been constantly exploring new marketing channels. As frenemies with OTA giants, how should airlines reposition themselves to boost direct sales? How should they establish a win-win collaboration with OTAs and other third-party players?

Digital will unleash new opportunities for passengers and airlines - what are the benefits we can already see and how is this transformation enabling build of digital experiences for our customers.

The Lufthansa Group has been actively leveraging NDCs to promote direct connections with ticketing agents and corporate customers. Will these direct connections become an alternative solution to the traditional GDS model? What are the challenges in implementing NDC?

Globally, the income from auxiliary services, rather than air ticket revenue, accounts for an increasingly larger proportion of profit for airlines. Income from auxiliary services for airlines such as the Big Four airlines and Spring Airlines is becoming the highlight. In the face of the huge business opportunities for the auxiliary services, the key is to accurately match the valuable products and services with the users who benefit the most. In this process, big data can assist airlines in gaining insight into the travel purpose of the users, and their focus on, inter alia, food, accommodation, travel, shopping, and entertainment. This helps airlines to design products that meet the differentiated needs of users, and make personalized recommendations to drive the growth of income from auxiliary services.

In 2015, SASAC asked main airline companies in China to promote direct sale and reduce distribution agents. It demanded that main three Chinese airlines should increase the proportion of direct sale to 50% and drop the agency fee by 50% on the basis of the fee in 2014. As the matter of fact, the demand is not only for SASAC, but also for Chinese airlines themselves. Standing in the big environment of internet development, airline companies in China have to strengthen the value perception of customers, and break away from the external flow. Accordingly, they ought to make mode innovations and optimize the user experience. Simon will share some of my thoughts on how do Chinese airlines face the challenge of digital retailing. A real Chinese airline case will be analyzed in the process to explain “customer-centric thinking mode” and “big data application”.

The initiative to end third-party air ticketing in 2016 by China’s major airlines presented a severe challenge to all B2B platforms. As airlines strive to promote direct booking, what is the growth potential for B2B platforms in the future?

As central enterprises play a salient role among China’s companies in recent years, they get to integrate business travel and centralize purchasing resources. Some companies including central enterprises are different from others in organizing structure, centralizing business trips and integration. In the process of integration and centralized procurement, different branch agencies have different commercial travel approval processes and internal information system. Besides, their demands for airline products and hotel products are also different. These are the challenges we have to face…. How to centralize business travel procurement and make its management efficiently for central business travel? That’s the point.

Through the analysis of multiple Airline cases, we will answer questions such as how to use customer data analysis and AI for passenger loyalty maintenance, how to maximize the marginal benefit of customers, and how to radiate more potential customers.

Artificial intelligence has forayed into the aviation industry to serve global passengers. How will this technology address the multilingual communication problem? How will the industry leverage artificial intelligence to improve products and service, enhance customer satisfaction and retention and build up new profit growth?

Merchants are often put under stress to keep up with the increased complexity of today’s e-commerce world and have to deal with ever changing security risks. Fraud not only cuts into profits but also creates a poor customer experience when managed inadequately. In such an evolving environment, modern fraud solutions (e.g. Artificial Intelligence based) can support and cultivate a merchant’s business growth path. However, merchants need to understand the requirements of how to best leverage fraud solutions to support their business.

What is the data drive of the enterprise? How to build a data-driven indicator system for a airlines？How to improve the fine operation of the membership system by means of using data analytics？How to use data analytics to do more scientific agent management?

Leveraging cross-promotion to engage consumers has been a new focus for airlines when traditional marketing approaches become common and unimpressive. Major airlines started to turned to international sports IPs as platforms to carry out marketing campaigns, with the aim to create closer connections with consumers via sports, build brand image and improve consumer loyalty in targeted markets.

China Southern Airlines, China’s largest carrier in terms of passengers carried, often introduced new policies for its marketing channels in recent years. It stopped air ticketing by proxy companies in 2016, halted seat selection and check-in services on third-party platforms this April and opened up all-channel ticket changes and refunds in June. These moves caused heated discussions in the industry and among passengers.

What’s the thinking behind these initiatives? What impact does this have on the marketing reform in the civil aviation sector?

Frequent flyer programs are often one dimensional, and less effective than expected in boosting sales or engaging with passengers who have accumulated low mileage. A lot of mileage points have been accumulated and not used. How should airlines make their mileage programs work for them? Will managing mileage and redemption with blockchain and other new technologies revolutionize such programs?

The availability of good in-flight WiFi connectivity is presenting immense business opportunities for airlines. How should carriers use WiFi to promote personalized services and products and improve travel experience and customer satisfaction?