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How Airlines Can Boost Sales and Ancillary Revenue in B2B Customer Segments (Travel Agencies, Corporates)?

by with No Comment B2B

In the fast-evolving landscape of the airline industry, effective strategies for driving sales and enhancing airline ancillary revenue in B2B customer segments, specifically targeting travel agencies and corporate clients, have become imperative. This blog post explores a journey through handling these segments via a B2B portal, creating tailored user privileges, setting targets, and utilizing analytics for optimal results.

Table of Contents

Personalized B2B Portals to handle Travel Agencies and Corporates

The Role of B2B Portals: B2B portals serve as the gateway to efficient interactions with travel agencies and corporate clients. Here, airlines can establish a seamless and personalized connection, streamlining the process of bookings, reservations, and airline ancillary services.

Creating User Privileges: Tailoring the experience for each entity is crucial. Airlines can optimize user privileges within the B2B portal, ensuring that travel agencies and corporates have access to the tools and information most relevant to their needs. This personalized approach lays the foundation for stronger partnerships.

Mapping Privileges for Enhanced Collaboration: Mapping user privileges goes beyond just access; it involves a thoughtful consideration of collaboration tools. Airlines can create an environment where travel agencies and corporates can efficiently collaborate, share insights, and provide feedback, fostering a mutually beneficial relationship.

Setting Targets for Revenue Generation

The Importance of Target Setting: Effective goal-setting is pivotal for driving results. Airlines can define clear, measurable targets for each travel agency and corporate client. This could include sales targets, client acquisition goals, or specific benchmarks related to ancillary revenue.

Tailoring Targets for Individual Entities: Recognizing the unique needs and capabilities of each travel agency and corporate partner is essential. Tailoring targets ensures that expectations are realistic and attainable, fostering a positive working relationship built on mutual success.

Incentivizing Performance: Incentives are powerful motivators. Airlines can introduce reward structures tied to the achievement of targets. This might involve exclusive discounts, bonus commissions, or recognition programs, encouraging travel agencies and corporates to surpass their goals.

Effective Tracking with Analytics

The Power of Analytics in B2B Relationships: Utilizing analytics within the B2B portal provides airlines with valuable insights into the performance of travel agencies and corporate clients. Comprehensive data analysis enables airlines to understand booking patterns, identify trends, and anticipate future needs.

Real-Time Dashboards for Quick Decision-Making: A real-time dashboard serves as a control center, offering a snapshot of critical metrics. Airlines can make informed decisions promptly, addressing challenges, and capitalizing on opportunities as they arise.

Personalized Analytics for Tailored Insights: Beyond generic data, airlines can provide travel agencies and corporates with personalized analytics, showcasing their individual performance and areas for improvement. This transparency fosters a collaborative approach to business growth.

Driving Revenue Through Offer Personalization 

Crafting Irresistible Offers: Offer personalization is a game-changer in the pursuit of increased sales and ancillary revenue. Airlines can analyze data to understand the preferences of travel agencies and corporates, tailoring special offers that align with their unique needs and interests.

Incentivizing Ticket Sales: Beyond standard commission structures, airlines can introduce incentives tied to ticket sales. This might involve exclusive discounts, priority access to new routes, or bonus programs designed to boost overall ticket sales.

Ancillary Product Incentives: Airline Ancillary revenue is a significant contributor to the overall bottom line. Airlines can design incentives for the promotion and sale of ancillary products, creating exclusive packages or commission structures that encourage travel agencies and corporates to actively market these additional services.

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Key Stats

Demand is high: Studies by IATA (International Air Transport Association) show a growing trend of business travelers willing to pay extra for convenience and comfort.

Untapped potential: A McKinsey & Company report suggests that airlines capture only a fraction of the potential ancillary revenue from B2B customers.

Ancillary revenue as a percentage of total airline revenue: According to Airline Weekly, ancillary revenue reached a record high of over 50% for some airlines in 2023.

Growth of B2B travel segment: A report by Phocuswright predicts that the B2B travel market will grow at a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 5.2% from 2023 to 2027.

Conclusion

As we conclude this exploration into effective strategies for driving sales and enhancing ancillary revenue in B2B customer segments, we invite you to share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below. How do you envision the future of B2B relationships in the airline industry? Your insights contribute to the ongoing conversation that shapes the strategies of tomorrow.

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Corporate Revenue Maximizer is an AI-based solution devised by Airline Distribution Optimizer to maximize corporate revenues for airlines. The application utilizes real-time data and analytics to create uniquely crafted offers, monitor performance, and facilitate efficient corporate travel management.

It maximizes revenue by targeting the appropriate price, cuts operational costs with automation, and boosts customer satisfaction through personalized services and data-driven decision-making.

Yes, it integrates perfectly with current revenue management and reservation systems, so operations will run smoothly without interfering with the workflows already in place.

AI analyzes booking patterns, corporate preferences, and real-time data to generate dynamic, tailored offers. This enhances customer engagement and maximizes revenue opportunities.

It provides real-time dashboards, performance insights, and personalized analytics for both airlines and corporate clients, helping identify growth opportunities and optimize strategies.

Silhouette of businessman walking in the airport at sunset time.

Understanding Corporate Travel and B2B Travel Platforms

by with No Comment B2B

Introduction:

Corporate travel is different from personal trips. It involves managing flights, hotels, and other services provided by travel companies efficiently while maintaining costs. B2B travel platforms play a very important role here in streamlining the whole process for business, travel managers, and employees.

Understanding Corporate Travel Management

Corporate travel management involves planning and optimizing a company’s need to travel. This involves:

  • Booking flights and hotels.
  • Following travel policies.
  • Ensuring traveler safety.
  • Keeping track of expenses and reports.

Corporate travel is much more regulated than personal travel, with pre-approved budgets, preferred suppliers, and safety requirements. Modern corporate travel platforms make this process more seamless and data-driven.

What is a B2B Travel Platform?

A B2B travel platform is a digital tool that assists businesses in their corporate travel management. A B2B travel platform, therefore, puts everything on one page, making a company able to:

  • Book flights and hotels.
  • Follow travel policies.
  • Monitor budgets and expenses.

These B2B travel platforms collect traveling data from airlines, car rentals, hotels, etc. This makes it easier for employees to have a seamless traveling experience.

Who Uses a B2B Travel Platform?

B2B corporate travel platforms are designed purposefully to fulfill the unique needs of business users. Essentially, there are three tiers of end-users.

Corporate travel managers (CTMs) deals with all types of travel bookings and policies; they mostly make flight bookings, accommodations, and other services particularly for groups of travelers and higher tiered employees. They develop the company travel policy, process employee-related travel expense and handle claims for reimbursement.

Business travelers may use the platform to self-book travel within company guidelines. After their trips, they submit expenses and their detailed itineraries.

Finance departments are the stakeholders who audit the travel expenses to ensure adherence to company policies and harness travel data for budget projections and cost-saving insights. It revolves around reporting, analytics, and oversight features.

How Do These Platforms Work?

Corporate travel systems have multiple modules that manage key functions, such as:

  • Supplier Management: Connecting with airlines, hotels, and car rentals to provide the best options.
  • Inventory Management: Organizing travel services into a user-friendly format for easy booking.
  • Booking Management: Ensuring smooth booking, approval, and payment processes.

Supplier management

Supplier management deals with monitoring and optimizing connections between the platform and suppliers, for example, travel services providers, such as airlines, hotels, and car rentals. However, when it comes to B2B corporate travel management, access to a huge inventory is just not enough but also a strategic choice and management of suppliers tailored to business traveler’s requirements.

So supplier management for B2B travel platforms involves a combination of the following things.

  • Supplier selection – Choosing suppliers based on their offers, such as cost, convenience, quality, and reliability, such as airlines that have frequent business routes, hotels near business districts, and car rental services for corporate clients.
  • Integration methods: There are various integration methods of supplier connection for the smooth management of varied suppliers.
  • Manual data entry through CMS (Content Management System): Data can be manually managed for niche suppliers whose offerings are unique and essential for businesses.
  • Extranet connection: The extranet is meant for suppliers who do not have automated APIs or traditional GDSs. They can update their content, such as rates and availability, through the extranet.
  • Central Reservation System (CRS) connection: Most of the bigger suppliers-including hotel chains- use their own CRS. B2B travel platforms will have an almost direct access to such information as live inventory, real rates, and bookings information straight from a supplier’s CRS, thereby streamlining much of its management over that suppliers.
  • Channel manager connection: Channel managers are third-party systems that aggregate inventory data from multiple suppliers. A B2B travel platform can manage these suppliers more efficiently by connecting to a channel manager instead of configuring separate connections to each supplier.
  • Wholesaler connection: Wholesalers or bed banks are the ones that bridge the gap between B2B travel platforms and numerous smaller or independent hotels. Through these links, there are different accommodation options, from mainstream hotels to boutique establishments suitable for different business traveler’s preferences.
  • GDS connection: GDSs aggregate and then distribute travel inventory from myriad suppliers, including airlines, hotels, car rental companies, and more. They can be a good starting point for accessing a wide variety of options. However, the filters can be applied by corporate platforms to present business travel results in a more manageable way.

Inventory management

Inventory management is a B2B travel platform component which collects information about various travel services from multiple suppliers and presents it in an easily accessible format for corporate travel departments to book. It acts as the platform’s “storefront,” showcasing various services users can explore and reserve.

The inventory management process begins after supplier relationships have been built and maintained with the use of the supplier management feature. The operation here includes extracting information from various suppliers, like airlines providing easy flight times, hotels close to business districts or MICE venues, and transport options that prioritize efficiency and punctuality.

Since suppliers are many and different, corporate B2B platforms focus on standardizing the collected data for usage in a business environment. Services have to be categorized and must be aligned with company travel policies. One option may be filtered for price caps, preferred vendor agreements, or even eco-friendliness for companies that support environmentally friendly travel.

Booking management

The real journey begins once the inventory from various suppliers is pooled and organized. Whether it’s a CTM overseeing multiple employees’ travels or an individual business traveler making their own arrangements, the platform’s user-centric booking engine steps into action.

Back to our topic, here’s a snapshot of how a typical corporate travel booking flow unfolds.

User authentication and role identification: A secure login ensures that the platform’s environment is tailored to the user’s role and aligns with the permissions and associated privileges.

Travel search and selection: Advanced search functionality allows users to browse through large inventories quickly. The system ensures that only policy-compliant options are surfaced, thereby streamlining the selection process.
Policy сompliance and approval. Many corporations have layered approval workflows, particularly for high-ticket bookings. The system automates these checks and sends bookings to managers for approval when required.

Booking and payment: Once travel options are finalized and (if required) approved, the user proceeds to the payment. Depending on the company’s arrangement, this could be done through a corporate credit card, a departmental budget, or even the employee’s card (to be reimbursed later). The platform securely processes the transaction and confirms the booking with the supplier.

Itinerary and travel details: Post-booking, the platform generates a detailed itinerary sent to the traveler. CTMs dealing with multiple bookings can access, manage, and distribute these itineraries as required. Many platforms also allow integration with personal or corporate calendars, automatically adding travel details. This ensures reminders, check-in prompts, etc.

Post-travel expense management: The journey doesn’t end once the trip concludes. Business travelers can submit additional expenses, which are then streamlined through approval workflows for reimbursement.

The backbone of this entire flow is the platform’s robust interface, ensuring CTMs and business travelers alike can navigate and manage their travels efficiently.

Conclusion:

B2B travel platforms are the backbone of corporate travel systems, simplifying complex processes for businesses and employees. In Episode 2, we’ll dive deeper into the core features of these platforms, including how they manage disruptions, expenses, and reporting.