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How Are Latin American Airlines Unlocking Revenue Opportunities?

The expansion of low cost activity in Latin America has prompted the region’s major carriers to adopt new pricing models very similar to the tiered fare structures implemented by their US counterparts. They are engaging in product unbundling of non core services in selected markets, while retaining essential components such as loyalty programs, premium seating and free in flight entertainment in the bundled product. It is a form of price discrimination aimed at segmenting the market according to customers’ willingness to pay, thereby maximising the potential revenue. But the success of the strategy hinges on carriers’ willingness or ability to cut non fuel unit costs – for example by lowering distribution and airport costs and increasing aircraft utilisation – and how effective they are in educating passengers on the ancillary model.
 
  • Where are Latin American carriers in this process, and what is the reception for product unbundling in Latin America?
  • Is the merchandising and sales capability at an optimal standard to enable proper product unbundling?
  • Is product unbundling sustainable in the long term?
  • Have the network carriers been able to achieve any corresponding reduction in unit costs?
  • Do passengers understand the product attributes, or lack thereof, associated with tiered fares?
  • What are the expected ancillary revenue gains given the historically low penetration rate of ancillary sales in the region?
 
Moderator: Oliver Wyman, Partner, Scot Hornick
Panel:
  • Amadeus, VP Airline Commercial, Victoria Huertas
  • LATAM Airlines Colombia, CEO, Santiago Alvarez
  • Lufthansa Group, VP Airline Sales, The Americas, Tamur Goudarzi Pour
  • Plusgrade, VP Business Development, Mike King

Transcript

Oliver Wyman:Welcome everybody. Listen, we just heard a lot of very exciting things about the future of NDC and how it's going to transform things. As James was just talking about, we, you know, we also have to think about what can we do in the here now, and as we're waiting for, waiting for those capabilities to develop, what can we be doing to improve our revenue performance? I'm gonna, I'm gonna start with the operator since the topic here is what our Latin American carrier is doing. I'm gonna start with you to begin with, Santiago. What, what are Latin American airlines doing to alter their core fare product as it relates to, you know, things like unbundling or rebundling fares as a step in increasing revenues?

Santiago Alvarez:Hello?

Victoria Huertas:Okay.

Santiago Alvarez:As I said in the earlier panel, we're having a lot of problems in the cost side, and we're working in the We work in the cost side a lot, but we also work in the revenue streams. First is a year ago LATAM launched for the short-haul business a new business model where we unbundled all our fare to give the passengers the option to buy just the services that they need. And this is only following all the trends that we already saw in Europe and in the US, and it's coming now to Latin America. And this is giving us a better opportunity to compete with the new entrants to the market and give a real opportunity to the customers to buy only for the services they need in their flight.

Oliver Wyman:Okay, so unbundling is a key aspect of what you're doing.

Santiago Alvarez:And—

Oliver Wyman:okay, sorry, I thought I lost myself there for a second. And obviously you're doing some other things too that rebundle those offers in a different way.

Santiago Alvarez:Sure. We work in all our revenue streams and we do work in the FFP. Are you hearing? We work in the FFP side and we work in the ancillary side. As our partner of Iberia told us, in Europe revenue coming from ancillaries is about 25 to 35% of the revenue of the airline. Here in Latin America we're just starting with that. And in the case of LATAM Airlines Group, we're reaching About $6 per passenger this year, and our goal is to be around $15 in the near future.

Mike King:Great, great.

Oliver Wyman:Tamur, let's turn our attention to you guys. You obviously are an important player here in Latin America, so you may have— but you have also this global perspective. How do you see this unbundling, bundling theme working around the corporate fair product. And, you know, what are your objectives to the extent that— you were talking about $6 to $15. I realize the fare levels are going to be considerably lower for domestic Colombia than your fare levels, but perhaps you could state it in percentage terms or something like that.

Tamur Goudarzi:Yeah, Scott, I think the bundling and the unbundling part is really only a tiny fraction of a bigger picture that applies here, probably with a certain time delay as much as it applies globally. And so I really enjoyed the keynote from Erica because I really was showing what's happening right now and what dynamics have now emerged in the last couple of months, or let's say 12, 20, 24 months in this industry. And we have a lot of catch-up still to do, and we are miles behind some of the retailing, some of the other industry. We all know that. But when we started Lufthansa Group in summer 2015 with a vision of the future. We were pretty alone standing there and got a lot of beatings also with what we had in mind, where we would, you know, come closer to a vision where the customer really gets the offer that he deserves and that he wants. And, and then a whole process started, and we've seen some of the examples now. And even IATA, particularly also IATA, and that's very good that IATA also So now putting an umbrella on it, it's actually now moving closer together, and it's clearly a thing that we have to do hand in hand. And when you then look at the steps that have been taken so far, this bundling and unbundling is only the first step. That is done. Everybody does that right now. Finding the right bundle, finding the right minimum amount of value-added products that the customer wants is still the tricky one, and that's something we definitely have to use the new technologies of personalization or personas for. But that's only the starting point. The next step, definitely even more important than the bundling and unbundling, will be, as also indicated, be coming also going away from the traditional 26 booking classes but going into continuous pricing. We are the first airline worldwide since a few weeks which are live with a test case now, where we have proven that we can offer the customer a cheaper fare instead of doing the next markup to the next price, higher booking class, actually to offer something cheaper in between 2 booking classes. We are doing this already.

Mike King:Mm-hmm.

Tamur Goudarzi:We're going live with the whole market, let's say, next year. But this will also not be the final step. Then the next step, and I think this is not so far away, will be the question of dynamic packaging, also mentioned before. before by Erika, and then bringing all those ancillaries together with a price. And that will be— steering and pricing will be one revolution, plus we will see retail options in all ways that were mentioned, and multiple façons, whatever the customer wants. So I think this whole bundling, unbundling, you have to put into that wider framework, and this is not far away. We're talking here not only 2020, I think in 2019 we already see some of these elements come true. And I think we as the group will be one of the first ones to bring it. So I'm very excited about that, and I'm sure it will also come to Latin America. And the question is also now the timing for which region, but this will greatly benefit the customers, I think, in this region.

Oliver Wyman:So, Tamur, do you have a particular target that you guys have shared that you can speak speak about publicly, obviously you may have something internal that you can't talk about, but do you have a target analogous to Santiago's $6 growing to $15 per pax? Do you have a percentage of revenues target for the ancillary add-on dimension that goes above and beyond a core fare product?

Tamur Goudarzi:Obviously we have targets. We don't communicate our targets on this officially. We are not, we're not the forefront of ancillary services. We've seen that comparison this morning, which airlines have the highest share of ancillaries. The question is how you calculate ancillaries now.

Victoria Huertas:Yeah.

Tamur Goudarzi:There are ways to calculate it. Is credit card fees an ancillary or not? But definitely we have targets, and but for me, less about now maximizing on a certain ancillary And there are the classical ancillaries of upgrades, ASRs, and extra bags that are now in the forefront. But we are thinking now how to merchandise much, much further into retailing, and not necessarily only flight-related but also non-flight-related. So I think that will be the future. But let's do the first things first, and the plumbing and getting these things together I think is the bigger challenge first before we deal with the develop other nice products, which definitely will come.

Oliver Wyman:Santiago, let me— and don't worry, I'll get to you guys. I know you have a lot to say too. But he mentioned something that kind of came up in the conversation here. To what extent would you say the initiatives that you're focusing on are driven by changes imposed by new competitors and LCC or ULCC entrance into your market versus you're addressing a need that you think the consumer inherently has as you, you know, look at what you're trying to do with your products?

Santiago Alvarez:Yeah, sure. We— sure.

Oliver Wyman:Number 2?

Santiago Alvarez:Sure, we do this to compete in a better way, to give our passengers the option to fly with us, to massificate the industry along with low-cost carriers. They're entering here and they're coming here to stay, so we have to accommodate our business model to compete with them in the way that they do it. So we kind of follow them in that essential part of the business. But then we, we have our long-haul flight system where we as well use some strategies to generate some revenue from ancillaries like upgrade readings or, or the upgrade for the, for the Yankee Plus economy class.

Victoria Huertas:Mm-hmm.

Santiago Alvarez:So we do this because we know we have to compete and We have to grow, and if we want to grow, then we have to follow the trends.

Oliver Wyman:Okay. Would you agree with that, Tamur, for you guys? Is it, yeah, we've got to compete, but we also know it's a growth factor independent of what the competition is doing? Yeah, ancillaries and specifically teasing apart the value proposition of the core fare product.

Victoria Huertas:Sure.

Oliver Wyman:Okay, great. Uh, Victoria, what— speaking of the customer, where are they in all this? How do we make sure that the changes, uh, particularly unbundling, which can prove to be sensitive in some markets, um, and, and this, you know, the sort of one-to-one offer complexity, how do we make sure that they ultimately undertaken in service to the customer as opposed to providing something the customer finds as a disservice or frustratingly complex and hard to navigate?

Victoria Huertas:I would say that as technology partners of our companies, this is one of the key questions around it. And the key questions is because all these ideas about having this customization, personalization, selling more, unbundling, bundling, Obviously, behind the scenes is what needs to happen in order to be consistent, in order to have end-to-end process that when the customer first sees the offer, first is a little bit clear in, in the sense that they know what they are getting, but also how this information is coming into the airline systems and into the PSS and into the distribution, whatever it is, of direct Connect or GDS or whatever, and it's consistent through the process. Because one is once you set the expectations of the customer of what is buying, so you need to explain to the customer actually what is the fare, what is the fare family, what they are getting, what they may get after they buy the air portion of that. And the other thing is how to serve that customer through the whole process. Because in the retailing industry, it's very easy. You go, you buy, and you get it 2 days after at the door of your house, but this particular industry is about the customer probably is buying something 6 months in advance, and many things can happen within those 6 months. And even when you are delivering the service at the airport, disruptions can happen. So how are you going to be making sure that all the systems and all the technology behind, it's obviously kind of creating these customers' experience that it's good and and probably not on the bad side. So I would say that as a technology partner, obviously everything that is connecting and integrating on these nice strategies and nice way to test if the customer is willing to pay or not willing to pay has a lot of work in the plumbing that we saw in the presentation because we need to connect the systems, the booking, the ticketing, the documents that the customer is having, and how you're gonna be managing that through the—

Santiago Alvarez:Yeah.

Victoria Huertas:overall process at all. And obviously it's about the data mining that is now much more important into the process, because when we speak about personalization and customization, it's about what is customization. So customization, in order for a product to be customized, needs to be first data-driven, because otherwise you're not using the knowledge that you're getting into the— of the customer in order to offer something. It has to be dynamic because probably the customer is accessing your information and getting different content depending if it's going for business or for leisure. It has to be somehow consistent in the way that he needs to know what he's getting and he has to be, you know, the clear message of what the expectation you are creating in that customer. And obviously it needs to be The kind of customer needs to be empowered of, I don't like this, I need to take it out. This last time, probably this didn't work, so I need to have a different experience on that. And this is why I see all this technology that has to be integrated and has to be provided from the beginning to the end of the delivery of the services needs to be somehow compliant with what the customer satisfaction, obviously, and the importance of the loyalty of the customer for the airlines.

Oliver Wyman:Good. Okay, thank you. What— I'll flip this question to you, Mike. We haven't got to call on you yet. To what extent do you think that things like branded fare offerings or things like of that sort can serve as a useful signal to avoid confusing the customers? Is that an important dimension of this? In terms of rolling it out?

Mike King:Well, yeah, I think it's very important to kind of create a good brand and really kind of communicate to your customer what's in that brand so that they can really have a distinction between the different levels of services that are included within those fares.

Oliver Wyman:Got it. Yeah, okay. What challenges do we face in educating governmental authorities so that we can actually overcome some of the restrictions that they might be imposing even today in certain markets? Santiago, you probably face this yourself as you think about what you've tried to do.

Santiago Alvarez:Sure, that's a key aspect of the model. We've seen that in a lot of countries where we operate. There are some rules that impede charging for a bag, for example, or they just move the laws in order to tell airlines not to do it. And we are always facing those challenges from our government, so we are always in close contact with them to make them understand that this is the way to show the customer the less price possible. And then the customer could add some services if needed to have a better passenger experience in their flight.

Oliver Wyman:Great. Great. Let's switch gears a little bit to— we've talked about, OK, we're going to pull some things out and we might sell them back to the customer as ancillaries. For those core airline-delivered ancillaries, things like the bag or the seat selection or the meal or whatever dimensions you might talk about, where do you think the biggest growth opportunities are? Tamur, I'll start with you on that one. Where are the biggest opportunities in terms of growing the ancillary revenue? Yeah, for you.

Tamur Goudarzi:Well, first of all, I think most important is you really have to look what your customer wants. So what feedback do you get? What he likes? What does he expect as minimum product? And what does he like to see à la carte on top? And what are the products that you have on top? Flight. I mentioned already some of those where we are in commercializing, but now we're coming to other elements like the food and beverage. As an example, since May we are live, for example, economy class on a long-haul. You can order sushi on top for a certain price if you want to have a different meal and you don't like the traditional meal on the flight, but you have always a meal. So on Lufthansa, on a long-haul, you'll always have a meal, but you can choose an option. This is on-flight. It's a classical one. But then the question also comes, what is before and after the flight? How do you actually commercialize the interest of the customer there? What kind of stopover programs do you offer a customer that goes via a hub and he has 5 hours? We're currently offering, for example, he can rent a Porsche in 3 hours and drive a German Autobahn. Yeah, so that's a product for €99, not even expensive. So, and these kind of products, you know, you have to find these These customer groups, what they want, and you have to offer it to them. And I think we have so many more things to come. Think of all the senses, think of health industry. There's so many things that might be possible to commercialize while you have captive time. And it's not only on the flight, it's the whole process from A to Z and even post-flight. So I think a lot of things, it's going to be very exciting. Yeah, but let's get first the basics right. and then think about these things, or think about them already now, but I'm sure they will come.

Oliver Wyman:Great.

Victoria Huertas:If I may?

Mike King:Sure.

Victoria Huertas:If I may, obviously Amadeus now serves kind of the— obviously we have the technology platform for the full-service carriers, and then we have kind of, I would say, the market reference platform for the low-cost carriers, which is New Skies. So what we see in the interaction with, with all these carriers is really that they are trying— they see that within the 2 years. There are many things, as you said, fixing the rides with the trip-related ancillaries or trip-related services, but they begin to see the potential of the non-trip-related in the specific short time that you're in the flight. It's all around it, right? We call it the cross-selling, and it's out there like insurances, hotel experiences, all those type of things.

Mike King:Yeah.

Victoria Huertas:But yes, once they get the trips segment, the flight, right, they see and they begin to see a lot of opportunities on the other things that are related to the overall experience instead of only the flight segment.

Oliver Wyman:No, in fact, that was one of the other areas I wanted to cover, so you've already checked that box off. I'm gonna— I'm going to go to you, Mike, and ask you for whether it's trip-related or, or, or let's say airline-delivered versus Non-core but travel-related ancillaries like stopover visits or hotel or rental car add-ons, things of that sort, insurances.

Victoria Huertas:Sure.

Oliver Wyman:I'm going to come back to something that's even further out there that's maybe not even travel-related at all, right?

Victoria Huertas:Sure.

Oliver Wyman:You know, but let's focus on those travel-related, whether they're airline core or they're, you know, non-airline partner type of opportunities. Where do you see the right place? And I realize this might differ by topic, but where is the right place in the cycle of consideration, booking, pre-travel, check-in, travel, post-travel? Where's the right place to tee up those opportunities to the customer, and how does that vary by product and/or by customer type?

Mike King:Yeah, and I think you really need to look at it product by product that you're offering. And so, you know, I mean, we're in the business of selling, helping airlines sell upgrades through, you know, a bidding process. And so we need to understand kind of when the right time is to offer that to the customer. When they first purchase a flight, They're focused on, what do I have in my wallet to be able to purchase this flight? And then as they actually get closer to departure time, they start thinking about the trip and am I going to be comfortable and what am I going to do on the trip? And then so they start, at some point, if you offer them something like an upgrade or some other travel-related service, they're going to be more likely to— To purchase it. You know, have a little more money at that time and be thinking about the actual trip. So like, I think it's really going to depend. I think you have to look at each offering and try and figure out kind of where in the cycle. And you certainly don't want to, you know, overspam the customer. You need to understand kind of what is the right merchandising touchpoint and do you offer that up at maybe 2 check-in, or do you offer it up like a week before check-in, or, you know, are there other points within, say, like the manager booking site that you offer those?

Oliver Wyman:Do you have any interesting anecdotes about, you know, say, let's say, you know, non-obvious things that you've discovered as you work with carriers in this space where you say this was kind of an interesting thing we didn't expect, but we found that It was very important to offer segment X, product Y, in time zone or time frame Z, and that was way more effective than time zone A.

Mike King:Well, I think we look at kind of— we actually study our data of kind of what's the most effective. And so we can actually look at it. If you offer something 2 weeks before departure, Well, how much, you know, how many opens do you get on that and kind of what is your offer rate that you get versus say like a week before departure? So we really look at that data throughout and try and figure out kind of what is kind of the best timing to offer that. And likewise, I think you can experiment with different ways of offering it. Maybe either if it's international, do you Do you offer it in different languages or do you offer it in English? And kind of see what kind of uptake and things like that do you get as well. And probably one of our most recent new customers was WOW Air. And they actually came to us, they had a big problem for the summer and they said, okay, we're rolling out our big seats across our network and we need to We need to merchandise those, but we need to get that out there quickly. And so we had to really kind of sit down with them and kind of understand who their customers were. And we looked at some of their behavior before and really kind of had— and we used a lot of their expertise as well to try and figure out what type of uptake they got on different offers.

Oliver Wyman:OK.

Victoria Huertas:Hello? I think Mike's point brings something very relevant because in the sense that there is no magic formula for the airline just to understand if this is going to be working better or not. It's about the technology and the speed that they need and the flexibility that they have within the systems in order to test, right? So this is why A/B testing probably is more important because you have to throw things out there, test, If they are working, if they are not working, you have to fix them very quick. And the sense also is that the airline needs to organize differently, even in the organizational phase, because right now, you know, you have one department that handles the hotel, one department that handles the pricing, one department that handles marketing. And when you are testing all these and you're trying to go there, you need to organize the airline in a different way, like in an agile mode, in order that you need to have the marketing guy and the pricing guy and the hotel guy and the ancillary services All together in order to try and test, you know, in a faster way to the market, because there is no magic formula, and it's about testing and see how the customer reacts and if the positive side of additional revenue and customer satisfaction are going to be met.

Oliver Wyman:That's a great point. In fact, Victoria, I was going to ask a question about that. You anticipated again, because we— I work with a lot of hotel companies and As well as airlines. And ancillaries have always been a very big and important part of the hotel industry, far more important than for airlines generally, at least historically. And in that industry, there's an increasing awareness that the new ways of— that ancillaries are being merchandised, priced, and marketed to customers requires a rethinking of the traditional boundaries between the various commercial functions of the business. So traditionally, functions have been managed very discreetly. So revenue management versus online merchandising, or loyalty versus payments, or things of that sort. To what extent— and you've already mentioned that at least from a test-and-learn standpoint, these things have to be integrated— to what extent do you think that really exploiting these new revenue opportunities is going to disrupt the traditional traditional functional silos of the airline's commercial departments?

Victoria Huertas:Big time. Yeah, I don't know if they are.

Oliver Wyman:Tamur looks excited.

Victoria Huertas:Yeah, big time.

Tamur Goudarzi:It's an important question. I mean, first of all, I think every startup, for example, that is disrupting, that is only trying to fix the hole on the road, will ultimately fail because that might be a commercial model that you can be bought by the big company later, or one of the airlines. Maybe that's your offering, but in the end you have to think further ahead and producing some business model that I think will be more long-term because the airline world is going to react to it. And of course we also reacting whatever Google is now doing, and we're looking very closely what they're doing. We hope that they don't, you know, drive the Ferrari and overtake us very so much. And that's the danger that there is. But definitely we are working on on this in various forms. One is really in-house in the teams, and you know, our premium carriers have that premium approach. We have teams that are really working on premium products, let's say for Austrian, Lufthansa, Swiss, in-house. That's one element where we develop all these things I mentioned before with our own teams. But let's say a daughter company like Eurowings has just founded a Eurowings Digital Group. So this is the whole team in Cologne that's completely independent from the airline, and they're basically developing further concepts of the future for either Eurowings Group, completely independent from the traditional business model. In order to have that freedom, they need to sit also somewhere else. And then we have also another option where we are now offering, particularly in the NDC world, the open API, the open Lufthansa NDC API. We're now offering to startups and other companies to actually design new business models that then in the future will link with us, and we will hopefully be able to integrate them into the big, like, say, organism of the airline that we are, which is not an easy thing for a startup to talk to us actually. We have to get better on this. So that's another option that, you know, I think opens another wealth of opportunities for startups. And we just had a pitch night recently in New York, and we had a really super response from startups, not only in the travel industry— I mentioned already cross-industry industry experiences which we can learn from, and that helps us a lot also for the internal processes.

Oliver Wyman:It's interesting because I know, Victoria, some of your colleagues also talk about this notion of platform plays where, you know, large company, Amadeus, Lufthansa, creates an environment that sort of invites lots of different technology players to participate, but— and establishes some sort sort of a standard way of interacting, but doesn't dictate the business models exactly as they emerge. So how do you see that notion of— that Tamur mentioned of kind of creating that platform API environment where, you know, much like, you know, force.com is for Salesforce, you know, how does that work for you guys? Is it something you're actively pursuing now?

Victoria Huertas:Actually, yes, we are actively pursuing, and I would say that we're working hard in 2 different platforms. One is the digital world, because the digital world is like a small different animal in the sense of the level of transactions, the way that on that digital world probably the customer, the end customer will connect, but also the intermediaries, the online travel agencies, and the gatekeepers will connect. And the other one is obviously a platform that could automate a lot of the things that the core people PSS would do. Eventually, what we want is give this layer of a platform or whatever you want to call it, but in order to be able to give the airline the freedom to service themselves and to build, obviously, and provide this flexibility that I was talking about. Because right now, there is no way that you can embark in a project of 2 years defining a product in the marketing side and probably figuring out that not working. So it's how you can do the serviceability. And for example, the merchandising platform or the merchandising engine, let's call it like that. So it's how we configure, and we're investing a lot on that, is how you put the system for the airline to be in control of that. So in order to make sure that they are deciding what type of bundles they want to do, they are the ones that are going to change if they want to unbundle something because because it's not working and on. And they don't need to go back to the code or to the, to the, to the whatever, whoever is going to be giving the support, but they can do it itself in the engine, like, you know, plug, play, switch on, switch off, and all that. So yes, we're working on that. We're really investing on that in the last 3 years. Some of our customers worldwide, and specifically one in the region, it's also, we're working on that. We're doing a lot of pilots in order to make sure that we provide this serviceability And this agility for the airline to be able to be more dynamic in the way that they—

Oliver Wyman:Just like I would install an app or de-install an app on my iPhone or something like that. Yeah.

Mike King:Okay.

Oliver Wyman:I want to come back to you, Santiago, because one of the things that we talked about was, you know, third-party partnerships and the idea that a lot of the products, you know, often come through other Others from white label. On the other hand, other folks have gone the step of building standalone business models within the airline. Your colleagues at TAM created TAM Viagens. You've got a relatively small airline, but with a powerful brand like Virgin Atlantic, creating Virgin Holidays. Do you think that's a route that, especially when it comes to the science of an overall vacation marketing question as opposed to just selling isolated components of travel, is that something that is especially useful to set up a standalone entity, or is it better to partner with third parties and not get too distracted by that?

Santiago Alvarez:That's a difficult question. We have both models. Tam has the white label model and then Lan has LATAM Travel and that's an in-house model. What is clear about it is that in that business you find some additional revenue with very high margins, but you have to keep it in separate teams because Even if you integrate it to the company, the business is very different. The negotiation systems are different. And we have a lot of digital customers in our web pages, but we have to find the right opportunity to sell them the hotel or the car. And that's not what we do. We have to focus in the bag. We have to focus in the seat. And we have to define how are we going to approach the customer with these additional non-core products. But it's definitely a good business, and we just have to understand how to do it and how to touch the client. And then if we do it right, we're going to be able to offer a 360 degree and experience to the customer from the flight to stay in the hotel and even the car or the insurance.

Tamur Goudarzi:Great, great.

Oliver Wyman:I have one last question, Mike. I want to try and direct it your way because I haven't picked on you enough. Looking longer term, I see a lot of travel companies with devoted customers and strong loyalty programs looking to monetize that loyal customer base in a broader way, not just through airline co-branded cards or coalition loyalty programs built up around the core of that frequent flyer program, but also in terms of presenting that customer base as a ready, engaged, and attractive audience to other product marketers through programs sometimes referred to as affinity programs. So affinity marketing. To what extent do you see airlines in Latin America, or frankly elsewhere, being able to sell a broader array of products and services, some possibly not even linked to any particular occasion of travel to those customers?

Mike King:Well, I think that it's, you know, the loyalty customer base is really You know, a wealthy or a very valuable customer base. And but I think you need to be careful in how you utilize that and how you put that out there. I think especially for your premium loyalty members, you want to make sure that you're offering them products that are, you know, kind of commensurate with their interests and not just kind of trying to sell them magazines or Right. Or whatever else. But I truly think that since they are loyalty travel members, you probably should try and focus more on travel-related perks and options. And one of the things that we've tried to do through our upgrade program is actually offer the ability for loyalty members to actually bid on upgrades using loyalty points. And that's really taken off at a couple of our airline partners.

Santiago Alvarez:Mm-hmm.

Mike King:And what we do find is that customers are actually willing to pay a higher value amount with loyalty points than they are with just pure dollars. So that's just one example. But I think that when you talk about maybe Upgrading them to better hotel stays or maybe offering some add-on tour services using their loyalty points. I think there's a lot of untapped potential with that.

Victoria Huertas:OK, great.

Oliver Wyman:Are there any questions from the audience before we dismiss the panel?

Victoria Huertas:Any questions?

Oliver Wyman:Not seeing any hands. Well, it's been a long day, so let us thank the panel for participating.

Santiago Alvarez:Thank you.

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