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| Travel Industry Issues |
| The Travel industry has been in “turbulence” for a number of years now. Although the industry itself is ever improving its processes and efficiency through business and technological innovation, external factors significantly affect the worldwide economy with the Travel Industry taking the biggest share of the impact: The terrorism threat and oil crisis significantly affect operational costs; globalization increases the need for alliances; the ever growing popularity of the Internet makes the industry even more competitive. |
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The role of loyalty marketers in such a dynamic environment is becoming increasingly more demanding, magnified by the industry’s inherent complexities such as:
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- Competition from low cost carriers and the increasing penetration of air travel in the middle and lower population classes
- Growing sensitivity of air travel demand to changes in ticket prices and incomes.
- Significant diversity in travelers’ profiles (such as business, leisure, religion and educational travelers), leaving airlines and travel organizations with a “mosaic” of customer segments with different needs, responding to totally different promotions and incentives
- Significant diversity in classes of service, with first class and business passengers paying more than double the standard fares, demanding exceptional service, which must be continued and supported by significantly differentiated loyalty benefits
- A no-barriers-to-entry perfectly efficient global distribution web, rendering more informed and highly demanding travelers
- Significant opportunities for cross-selling and alliances with drag-along businesses such as travel insurance, hotel accommodation, ground transportation, duty-free shopping and entertainment.
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| What We Can Do for the Travel Industry… |
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| A holistic approach to Travel loyalty |
| Axiom has a unique proposition for the Travel industry: |
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- Build an international loyalty program that will encompass all services (passenger travel and freight, accommodation, ground transportation, travel insurance and entertainment) and all channels of customer interaction (branch, Web, kiosk, phone, SMS, etc). Expand the program to coalition partners, with proven methodologies for technical and business integration, including inter-company logistics and financial arrangements
- Promote and reward differently for each route, class of services, product, transaction channel and type of transaction, based on each transaction’s different profitability and strategic importance to the organization
- Offer incentives to customers, employees, partners and agents, recognizing each party’s individual contribution in every transaction, in an orchestrated effort to engage everybody
- Gather data to build the knowledge on each customer’s travel profile by measuring actual transactional behavior (tickets, accommodation events, etc) vs. attitudes and intentions (responses to surveys, complaints, contacts, website visits, etc)
- Monitor and measure customer behavior, through intelligent segmentation
- Target and communicate in a customized manner, optimizing promotional cost and maximizing return on investment
- Do all of the above through easy-to-use tools at the hands of business users, with no or minimal IT support.
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| Services & Technology Support |
Our strategy for loyalty management in the Travel industry is supported by services and technology.
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| Merit Travel, a Merit Loyalty Suite® Industry Extension, equips our clients in the travel industry with the tools to implement flexible programs with sound financial justification. |
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| Merit Intelligence enables multi-dimensional enables multi-dimensional dynamic segmentation based on industry-specific parameters, such as purpose of travel, life-stage analysis, etc. |
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| Merit Communications allows for targeted customized communications by traditional and electronic means. |
