Page 27 - AAA JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2018 Online Magazine

not, assigned seat or not, window seat or options, it offers only new oil” and said he had “been
an aisle, quiet cabin, extra legroom, etc. It the price-product blown away” by the valuation of
came down to providing passengers with combo that are most digital companies.
different buying options even with the same likely to uniquely meet Over the next two years, the
base fare. that customer’s needs, airline will be rolling out Wi-Fi,
Today there are many more combi- and presenting the mobile payments and digital bag-
nations that passengers can opt for in information relevant to gage tags with RFID tracking on
addition to the base product. Each of that customer to help all its flights in stages. Sensors
these, in effect, represent a more granular him make the optimal will also be deployed to track
segmentation process. This simply means choices. the behaviour of cabin crew, and
that ten different passengers on the same passengers’ movements to see
flight, each of whom have paid the same Data Driven how processes can be improved.
amount, may actually be getting completely Essentially it then boils Currently, these sensors have
different products. down to Big Data and been installed on a few aircraft.
Analytics. Taking a large It is experimenting with technol-
Customers-Centric amount of disparate, ogy that might be able to read
o get the most out of this arrange- structured and unstruc- passengers’ faces to determine
ment, it is important that price and tured data from various their feelings, in order to help the
product are aligned to customer sources and turning it cabin-crew provide better service.
Tneeds. “One of the biggest chal- into something of real Using data and machine-learning
lenge in the aviation industry is the creation value is generally well to better understand what pas-
of high degree of transparency in product understood, however, sengers were prepared to pay
offering in terms of pricing. The low-cost working out how best to for baggage fees, the airline is
carriers are of course fueling this opportu- apply it to enhance cus- also looking to tailor the pricing
nity massively and are making great use of tomer experience is not to individuals.
the situation. But the big question for the quite as straightforward.
full-service carriers is – ‘how do we react to Utilizing the data through “This year, the focus in
this?’ Then you have airlines that are cre- predictive analytics and Singapore is to embrace Fast
ating hybrid models, which also have the through real-time ana- and Seamless Travel (FAST)”
‘how to approach’ question before them,” lytics is what would set -- Logan Velaitham
says Kruss. one airline from another.

“If you drive digitalisation to its absolute
extreme, you can create a situation where
an airline is selling a seat but nothing
beyond that. Everything else will be tailored
to the customer’s needs. For example, the
in-flight entertainment will not be offered,
however, to watch the blockbuster of your
choice, you just add in US$10. But there
is a limit to what the customer will accept.
At some point the industry will realise that
it can technically bring in an innovative
product but the customer will not accept
it because there will be too much discrep-
ancy with regards to the price difference,
considering the same class seating.”

It is extremely important for airlines to Low-cost carrier Air Asia “We collaborated with Changi
keep in mind that such market segmenta- is working at pulling out Airport Group to automate and
tion needs a very targeted merchandising. the stops to become a innovate our check-in and airport
The concept of Segment-of-One includes digital airline. Speaking experience. When you fly out of
clear understanding of each customer’s to the media, Fernandes Changi with us, expect a fully
needs and instead of presenting generic described data as “the automated service with

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