Hans Christian Andersen once said, “to travel is to live”. He may not have had business class travellers in mind, but if you live your life travelling for work that life is set to improve, radically. In future, when it comes to business class, there won’t just be options to consider, you’ll enjoy a personalised experience based on price, convenience and comfort.
Within the next five years, business travel is predicted to show such rapid growth it will be worth £1.3 trillion to the global economy, up from £1 trillion in 2017, according to Allied Market Research.
“The business travel audience for an airline is super high value and that’s why they’re all challenging their business models to see who can win in this race,” explains Randel Darby, chief executive of luggage concierge service AirPortr. “If you look at BA, the business audience they cater for makes up the majority of their global revenue. So that gives you a feel for how important it is to come up with a good proposition for business travellers.”
By using data, with the traveller’s consent, we can identify traveller trends such as preferences, past trips, preferred airlines, airports, amenities and payment methods
Jason Wynn, chief commercial officer at Upside Business Travel, says: “Personalisation is the future and it’s coming quick.” The company is the first business air travel booking site which uses advanced tech and expert human support especially catered to their business class passengers.
“The exciting part is what becomes possible once you can afford to work on true transformation. Our system uses machine-learning and data to train our software to get smarter and smarter with every trip, and as a result each trip becomes more personalised than the last,” says Mr Wynn.
Upside Business Travel focuses on price as clients don’t have to pay additional fees for quality customer service and companies get 3 per cent cashback on their total travel spend. This brings the leisure market’s desire to compete on price to the business market too.
Different needs for business and leisure travellers
Another key to innovating is appreciating the difference between the two markets. Business air travel is driven by frequent flyers who don’t have the time to amble through the airport looking at the duty free or buying magazines to read on the plane. They are experts at moving through airports as fast as possible, so one way to personalise is to relieve them of any baggage that will slow the process down.
Business travellers don’t want to be queuing with leisure travellers, who are perhaps not as familiar with how to get through an airport as quickly as they are, Mr Darby points out. AirPortr intends to revolutionise this situation by removing the source of the frustration entirely. They offer priority check in, on the doorstep at a time determined by the business traveller.
“It cuts out all the ambiguity of how early am I going to have to get to the airport, how long are the queues going to be? You just go straight through. Business travellers want to be hands free and productive,” he says.
In the future, this personalised approach may be implemented across the whole of the journey, thanks to biometrics. Referring to London’s Heathrow Airport, Mr Darby adds: “In Terminal 5, they’re now testing fully automated self-serve boarding for customers so you no longer need to see, necessarily, an airline agent, because you are biometrically enrolled. What’s to say that we couldn’t build that into the doorstep too? Create fast track through security as a product.”
Personalised business travel driven by data
AirPortr and Upside Business Travel are already ahead of the game when it comes to making a name for themselves in pioneering personalisation, but many other travel companies are looking to the future and investigating how emerging technology will impact the way we think about business air travel.
“Generally, business travellers are more schedule driven as opposed to price driven,” says Rashesh Jethi, head of innovation for airlines at Amadeus, explaining how personalisation may help going forward. “By using data, with the traveller’s consent, we can identify traveller trends such as preferences, past trips, preferred airlines, airports, amenities and payment methods. This means we can dynamically build and present the right offer.” It’s not just a matter of choice, it’s about an experience that’s tailor made.
Sylvia Brune, founder of AHOY, a leading flight booking app for business travellers, says: “It’s hard to know ahead of time whether you will be stressing to catch the flight and therefore need fast track or will have to work on an important presentation and therefore need better ticket class where you can power your laptop.”
Change can happen in seconds, so responses must be made in minutes. Ultimately, it’s vital future business air travel becomes much more personalised because of the very nature of business itself.
