Win Customers By Offering Flexible Travel Options

When booking flights, travelers are constantly seeking out the best offers with flexible booking options and cost savings. Travelers appear to be increasingly opting for low cost options when booking flights rather than going to a preferred airline brand.

In order to offer customers flexible flight booking options and competitive pricing you need to keep ahead of key trends in how customers are choosing to travel to their destinations.

What are the key trends in air travel bookings?

Customer Preferences Rule

In our previous blog post Win Customers By Offering The Best Booking Experience, we looked at how travel is continuously viewed as a commodity with customers seeking out the best possible price. This is also evident in the preferences of travelers choosing how to get to their destination.

It seems that consumers in particular are increasingly choosing flights based on price rather than brand and even becoming more comfortable with creative ways to maximize their travel budget. For example, travelers are increasingly open to ‘mix and match’ airfares by booking flights outbound and inbound travel with separate airlines to save money – this is happening both in independent bookings and package bookings via travel companies.

The desire for low cost travel options is also evidenced in the continued growth of low cost carriers (LCCs) who accounted for 25% of worldwide airline market share in 2015. While LCCs have traditionally focused on online direct sales to consumers they are also starting to penetrate the business travel market by working with global distribution services (GDS) to sell inventory. This demonstrates that the appetite for low cost travel goes beyond the consumer travel market place.

The trend for no-frills air travel that has grown to such prominence in Europe is also moving across to the US marketplace. Traditional US legacy carriers are emulating European LCCs by breaking up offerings to give travelers more affordable options to choose from to achieve lower costs.

Travel companies need to employ the right technology to cater for the preferences of travelers for low cost flights and for providing flexible options that allow customers to achieve the best possible prices.

Low Deposit Offers Take Off

With travellers looking for both low cost air travel and to book early, an opportunity has emerged for travel companies to win customer bookings by offering low deposit booking options. These allow travelers to take advantage of competitive early booking rates while only paying part of the cost upfront.

While travel companies can secure bookings early by offering low deposit options this does present challenges – for example, in order to secure reservations for customers with airlines companies are often required to cover the full airfare at the time of booking. This presents additional financial risk as well as creating cash flow implications to the business.

In order to facilitate offering low deposit options, travel companies must find solutions that address these challenges.

Providing Flexible and Low Cost Travel Options

Travelers are increasingly seeking to fly at low cost as well as looking for flexible payment and booking options. Choosing the right supplier payment solution can help you to meet the changing demands of your customers by offering competitive pricing and flexible booking options, as well as allowing your business to optimise cash flow.

Download our mini-whitepaper ‘Win Customers By Offering Flexible Travel Options’ for detailed insight into the key trends influencing travelers when looking for flights and for tips on choosing a supplier payment strategy that helps you offer customers what they want.

More Ways to Win Customers by Enhancing Supplier Payments

As a leading supplier of payment solutions to the travel industry, our experts have put together a whitepaper that summarizes the key trends shaping the industry today—and details how you can capitalize on these trends to evolve and win customers.

With a focus on the European marketplace, topics covered include:

• Factors influencing destination choices
• Commoditization of travel services
• Popularity of early booking
• Competition between metasearch, intermediaries and suppliers
• DIY trip planning vs concierge-style agency services
• Changing accommodation preferences

.