Many thanks to all the participants and speakers who made Future Travel Experience Ancillary & Retailing 2023 a success!
Top 3 things that make this event different and unique:
=> We focus on the customer or guest experience – beyond one stakeholder or one vendor perspective
=> We tell the story of a better end-to-end experience, through industry collaboration
=> We value personal interactions, with 600 delegates under one roof, served with Irish hospitality
Some takeaways from the second days’ keynotes and panels:
=> Charu Jain, Alaska Airlines: Innovation is one of our 4 growth pillars, the airline’s Board has an innovation committee, looking at innovation that simplifies the experience (e.g. no checkin, no bag tag)
=> NDC panel with Stéphane ORMAND, Air France, Roland Jaggi, Aegean, and Christian Hylander, MasterCard: metrics should account for ancillary revenue, payment is underestimated in the commercial teams, revenue management is different from offer innovation, data are still managed in silos across departments, new organization is required to handle offers and orders
=> Offer panel with Paul Carroll AirAsia, Simon Pitt, PNG Air, Alex Mans , FLYR Labs, Andrew Murphy, Cartrawler, moderated by Ursula Silling, Branchspace: Offers will come from a “bundling marketplace” like a super-app, the goal is to optimize the shopping basket for each guest, any ancillary can be revenue managed, legacy approaches like structured fare classes won’t fit with this new world
=> Day of travel panel with Martin White, Spirit Airlines, Bobby Healy, Meili, Jennifer Koontz, Enterprise, Chris Gwilliam, Airport Dimensions, and Randel Darby, Airportr: airlines see customers first and need to think end-to-end, even a LCC that sells non-refundable fares can propose a Cancel-for-any-reason service, the goal is to remove friction during the day of travel through better planning and personalization
