Brussels Airlines launches new booking platform
Today, the booking platform behind brusselsairlines.com was migrated to Amadeus e-Retail, which is currently already used for lufthansa.com. Herewith, Brussels Airlines is a first mover in a project to harmonize all four Lufthansa Group network airlines' booking platforms. The remaining airlines, namely Austrian Airlines and SWISS will follow suit later this year. This means that from now on, Brussels Airlines offers all flights and services such as baggage booking and seat reservations of all four Lufthansa Group network airlines on its website.
Part of the Brussels Airlines embedding into the Lufthansa Group network airlines was to find further synergies within the Lufthansa Group. The strategic reason for using one common booking platform for all Lufthansa Group airlines is to offer a consistent user experience to the customers across the different platforms and make the same group-wide flight offer available across all platforms while reducing operating and development costs. Regardless of the Lufthansa Group airline the customer wants to travel with, he or she has access to the group-wide flight offer, while experiencing a modern unified interface with new features. The harmonization of the different airlines' booking platforms also allows making functionalities much faster available for the customers and therefore allows for quicker innovations.
The move to the Amadeus eRetail platform only affects the technical backend of the website. Brussels Airlines maintains its corporate brand identity towards the customer.
"Investing in our customer's experience remains essential in our way forward. With this move, we benefit of the know-how and tools available in the Group to offer our customers an even better online booking experience. The aim is to create a unified and state-of-the-art reservation platform for all the Lufthansa Group airlines' websites and mobile apps, which will significantly accelerate the availability of new online products, services or functionalities."
Dirk Janzen, Vice President Pricing and Revenue Management, Commercial Steering & Embedding
The biggest benefit for Brussels Airlines customers is the broader and group-wide offer of flights and ancillaries. For instance, bookings can be changed and extra travel options can be added to a booking, even if that booking includes flights from other Lufthansa Group airlines, adding to the smooth experience of the customer.
Next to a larger flight choice, the new platform also offers more service options to customers, such as more seat reservation options (including extra legroom seats), more online rebooking options and an option to block a fare for 48 hours, which is free of charge if the booking is later confirmed.
Furthermore, the customer service will also be harmonized and therefore operated out of one hand by Lufthansa InTouch. The subsidiary that already supplies the service center for Lufthansa, now does the same for Brussels Airlines. The advantage of this harmonization is that Brussels Airlines customers who encounter problems during their online booking, can now contact one central service center that assists in completing the reservation.
Carbon offsetting in the reservation process
One of aviation's highest priorities is working towards more sustainability and a reduction of its carbon footprint. As part of Brussels Airlines' many initiatives and projects in this area, the new booking platform now also offers customers the option to compensate the CO2 of their air travel, thanks to a cooperation with Compensaid. Compensaid offers passengers the choice to spend their contribution on a reforestation project by myclimate, or to invest it in Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), which reduces carbon emissions by 80% compared to fossil fuels.