Delivering great traveller experiences as air takes off

Transcript

James Marshall:Hugh said he was the last thing between you and lunch. Sorry, I'm the one who's the last thing between you and lunch. I'm going to try to make it painless and fast. I know it's— I hear a lot of noise out there, so let's go for it. So, You know, first of all, I just want to, you know, I think I've been in Singapore and I think we talked all these last few months on how we are turning the page, you know, how we're dusting off the travel industry or the airline industry is dusting itself off after all the difficult time we've had. And with Asia Pacific really opening, even though most of Asia Pacific is opening, I think we're all very, very happy of how things are going. But the reality is the pandemic has taught us, many, many of us, that it isn't— travelling is not just a luxury, it's a necessity. Even more so today, the traveller experience is and should be at the forefront of our minds. And I think the previous session, what Damian was saying and the panel was saying, it's really around retailing, is around the emotion, around what the customer experience is. is when they travel. So as industry insiders, we must put ourselves in the shoes of the traveller and we need to step back and think what's important, what are those incremental changes that can be made to the experience to make the whole greater than the sum of the parts. And that's around the whole ecosystem of travel, not just as airlines, not just as travel agents, but really everybody in the industry. So let me quickly go through a few very high-level insights and trends that are happening or that we've seen after the pandemic. So first of all, we all know that— just trying to make sure what's behind me. Oh, I have one in front of me, sorry. So we all know that, you know, during the pandemic, IATA forecasted that we're going to be losing— we've lost $200 billion over the 2020-22 period because of the impact of the pandemic. And also we've seen many airlines disappearing. This was back in September '21, but obviously all of us have been suffering and hopefully we're turning the page right now. On the positive side, there are some great trends that we've seen earlier on. We talked about the mobile side of things, and at Expedia, we've really seen how the searches or the bookings made on mobile have more than doubled or nearly doubled compared to 2020, 2019. And also another positive trend is obviously that we expect to get back into profitability by 2023. So I think there's some really good optimism out there. We've seen in the discussions that we heard earlier on how things are moving, but we also need to understand what are the strengths, what is the work that we need to do. A few more trends, just looking at Singapore itself. We've seen that with the reopening of travel, but at different stages, and I think we're in a definitely very good position now, but also the capacity constraint, the closure of China, there's still hurting the region. Also the high ticket prices. We've seen the trends or the way travellers that have been choosing the destinations have been changing. But the good news is that we've seen some trends coming back and we've seen some top destinations from before the pandemic are coming back to be at the top. So for example, we have Japan, Thailand, and South Korea are back at the top 3 in terms of destinations. And also Europe is back at the top in terms of the searches that our customers are looking at for the end of the year and the few months at the beginning of the year. So it's all great news in terms of trends of destination and travellers coming back, even though, you know, the ATPs are still very high and we know that not everybody can fly as much as they would want. In terms of other trends, We have seen some very clear shifts in travellers' mindset around loyalty and sustainability. We talked around sustainability earlier on, and I know it's the big theme of the conference here. But in terms of loyalty, some of the surveys that we have done and some of the studies that we've done show that more than half of the consumers that we surveyed say that it's more important to travel with their loyalty providers than before the pandemic. More than half of the consumers also value special discounted pricing when it comes to their loyalty programs. And they also look at how they can use their points better, how they can earn more and really focus on future travel with their, the providers that where they have membership. In terms of Sustainability is definitely top of mind for all our travellers, all our customers. The research that our Expedia Group Media Solutions has done recently showed that although 90% of consumers look for sustainable options when travelling, actually 70% feel overwhelmed by starting the process of being a more sustainable traveller. So many of us here are really doing great work in terms of sustainability, but there's so much to do. Ahead. And I think we all need to work together. It's not very clear the best way to do it, but I think we know that it's top of mind of our customers. So, you know, we talked around how travel, taking a flight, has evolved a little bit over the century, the last century. But the reality is that before the pandemic and now, the traveller behavior has definitely changed. It's up to think, for us to think about how our offering and the services are in line with these evolving trends so that we can remain one step ahead. So what's next? We are the important innovations. What are the important innovations that we need to do about as an industry in order to weather the next storm and take the industry to the next era? So let's look at some of the things that we are doing at Expedia Group. So first of all, we've introduced new features that make the experience of shopping far— sorry, that make the experience of shopping and booking flights on our site an even more delightful experience. So the basic one is really keep on improving the flight search. And a lot of the technology, a lot of the investments that we do in an evergreen way is around speeding up the delivery of information, better accuracy for travellers. But the most important thing for us is we try to bring back that confidence. We need to make sure that people who come to our site and look at the offering from all our providers, from our airline partners, really inspires that confidence that can go ahead and book. So first of all, we introduced the price tracking and predictions. So these are notifications to flag the best price for the trip. At the best time of the day and helping them reduce friction by giving travellers confidence that they're booking at the right time. So they have that information at their hands and they can really make the best choice knowing how the prices have evolved and how the prices are expected to evolve. But then what we've also done is offer the price drop protection, and that's a fintech that customers pay for, but it really allows the travellers to purchase that protection at the checkout. So we introduced that in the US at the moment, and it will be rolled out in other countries in the near future. And then what happens is that it will get paid back in case the price drops. So it's something that Expedia will pay back if the price on our sites is lower than what they purchased. And the good thing is that our partners, our airline partners, don't need to do anything about it. They just benefit from the conversion, from the selling of the ticket. Because the customer had the confidence that they're going to get the best possible price. We're also looking at new ways of leveraging AI capabilities to improve the way the travellers can self-select. So Damien talked around retailing and the emotion, and I think very often we shouldn't— very often a lot of the travel agents are pushing for low price, going for the cheapest fare, but the reality is that we should focus on attribute selling. We should focus on understanding what is best for the customer and what they need to buy. So we look at decisions made by the traveller who search on areas such as optimum timing, stopovers, search selection, bag selection, and then we really highlight very early on in the funnel so that they can really choose the best flight and the best ancillaries or the best overall bundle for what they need, whether it's an individual traveller going for a quick trip return or if it's a family going for a long holiday, you know, of a couple of weeks where they're going to need, you know, seats and bags and everything. So this really helps the customer be confident that they're buying the right product, but at the same time it helps our airlines sell the best product, high yield, more ancillaries to the customer in a way that really benefits everybody and helps the experience. I had a video, a demo, but we don't have time because we know that you're all waiting for lunch, but I'd be very happy to show it to you during the break if anybody's interested to see how it works, because I think it's quite a change on how normally people book on an OTA. Another thing that we've introduced is shop with credit. From the beginning of the pandemic, we had to manage about one, over $1 billion in credits, which is about 3 million tickets. And that showed us that we really needed to do something around that. And we know that flexibility is something that the pandemic has created and people expect flexibility and it's going to be here and it's going to stay with us. So we needed to provide the right service for that. So what we have is we've taken our front-end capabilities for servicing And now it's much easier for customers to go to our site and use air credits just like any other form of currency, very similar to what an e-commerce retailer would have with a gift card, for example. So it changes, even though at the backend we know that it's a very complex technology in terms of doing the exchanges or refunds and all that, customers are really feeling that they have that credit and they can play with it and we make it very easy for them. So that's definitely a big plus in the customer experience when people require flexibility. By the way, I also have a demo if anybody's interested to see how it looks. And this is something we have currently in the US and Canada, but we'll be rolling it out around the world. So in addition to these updates on the traveller side, we're also looking on ways to support our partners and improve their experience. On working with us. We've evolved, first of all, our marketplace, and the reality— what we want to try to do is to deliver greater transparency to the best and the best possible experience in terms of end-to-end booking for the travellers. So there's a lot of work on that at the moment. It's something that I can't really share that much, but you will see in the next few months, probably in the next year, a lot of new ways of how our marketplace is structured and how we sell, how we retail to our customers in the best possible way. But data, you know, we talked about how important data is, and this is something that we have. We also have tons of data, and it's something that we really want to use for the benefit of our partners. We have best-in-class insights and tools to help the airlines attract the best traveller. So one of the things we have is, for example, the partner performance tools reports. And this is a screenshot of an example of some of those insights that we give. And it's really, you know, whether it's ATP trends, market share, forward-looking booking data, or even competitor set performance on same operating routes, it's extremely useful. And for the partners that are using it, they see great value of it and it really helps them manage. You know, they have a full proxy of the market. Through the data that we provide them. We also power our partner sites. We talked about what airlines can do in terms of retailing, and that's actually something that we do, and we've been growing in that area for quite some time, whether it's hotels, cars, activities, etc., packages. And we work with airlines on APIs and white label templates. They provide technology, we provide the marketing tools that help drive new demand, and that includes customized merchandising pages, members-only deals, package hotel rates, cross-sell solutions, and email marketing support, among others. And this is something that really helps airlines get all the value of an experienced retailer like ourselves to help them on their own direct channels. But More than that, with the mission that we have at Expedia to power travel for everyone everywhere, we're opening our technology to the travel ecosystem with what we call Open World Platform. It's something that we announced a few months ago, and beyond the current existing solutions that I explained earlier on with our B2B business on different content and technologies, we're now opening the rest of the ecosystem, of our world travel ecosystem, by breaking down our core technology into building blocks that you can see here to bring more and more layers to the travel ecosystem, expanding reach and demand for everyone. So our solution will be configurable to specific business needs in a flexible, quick, and self-service-enabled manner, whether you need just one of those blocks or multiple services. So to close, I always like this quote from Benjamin Franklin: when you finish changing, you've finished. We know that the trends accelerated with COVID during these last 2 years, and technology is a big part of that. So the river got low, the rocks got sharp, and we pulled together. We need to get pulled We need to pull together to get back on our feet. But where we are now is a new world where we can't be anything else but traveller-centric. So having a traveller-first mindset is our absolute commitment, and we encourage you to do the same. And with that, I'd like to thank you. I'd like to wish you a great conference and a great lunch. Thank you very much.

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