The passenger has gone digital and mobile
Nawal K. Taneja
Ashgate
Information and technology are changing passenger behavior and passenger expectations as well as employee and shareholder expectations. Passengers now have richer and timelier information, enabled by digital, mobile, and social technology. They are now empowered, for example, by not only price-service comparison websites, but also user-centric rating websites. Passengers now want to be in control and expect airlines to become solution providers and aggregators of value to provide much more personalized services and better travel experiences across the travel cycle. Airline employees expect to be given informationand technology-enabled tools to do their jobs to meet passenger expectations by accessing and acting upon real-time information. Shareholders expect returns that are reasonable and relatively stable through business cycles. Airlines can now use insightful information and enabling technologies to target more intelligent segments of the passenger base and serve each selected segment with profitable price-service options. These passenger, employee, and shareholder expectations can be met by airline managements through further innovation of business models that start with an increasing focus on customer centricity (from operation and product centricity), followed by a better understanding of newer customer segments—maturing sub-segments in North America and Europe, growing middle classes in Asia and Latin America, and the divertible segments from trains and buses in countries such as India and Mexico. Next, the evolving business models need to focus more on different price-service option packages for strategically-selected segments while minimizing the complexity and costs of producing and delivering cost-effective services for these segments.