A virtual travel concierge is designed to make an airline passenger's journey less stressful. It's an opt-in service that provides passengers with information and advice from the moment they leave home until they board their flight (and possibly for their entire trip).
Construct a relevant dialgoue with passengers
By predicting a passenger's wants and needs the virtual concierge ensures all communication is timely and relevant. The passenger's wants and needs are determined by understanding their time available, location, and context.
- Time available is the amount of time left before the flight's estimated departure time.
- Location can be estimated from time available or captured more accurately using technology such as location based services (LBS). With LBS, passengers agree to share their mobile phone's cell location once or twice during their journey, this enables the virtual concierge to calculate an estimated time of arrival at the airport and determine if the passenger is late, on-time, or early. Using this information the virtual concierge can determine how best to assist the passenger.
- Context is other information known about the passenger and includes gender, reason for travel, and destination.
Use mobile as the primary means of communication
The virtual concierge creates a personalised dialogue with each passenger and the mobile phone is the ideal channel to conduct this conversation (although smart kiosks and digital media may be used in the terminal building).
The mobile web offers a graphical way of providing passenger's with their own personal departure board, backed up by other relevant information (e.g. traffic conditions, weather at their destination, etc) and allowing them to provide feedback for other passengers (e.g. sharing car park availability or security queue lengths).
However, adoption of mobile-web is still relatively low and with the high costs charged by mobile operators to overseas users, SMS (text messaging) offers a more practical means of reaching the largest audience. Note: It is likely that virtual concierge services will support both SMS and mobile formats to suit the preferences of individual passengers.
Decide what's in it for you
A virtual concierge is typically offered by an airline or travel management company (TMC). These organisations have a direct relationship with the passenger and are in the strongest position to offer virtual concierge type services.
If you work for an airline or TMC, you can probably see how a virtual concierge can enhance customer service levels and offer you a point of differentiation. However, to be successful the virtual concierge must at least pay its way and ideally have the potential to generate substantial revenues.
On the basis that people don't like paying for information, often the best way to fund the service is to use an ad-funded model and allow airport retailers, appropriate brand advertisers, and your affiliates to send a limited number of targeted messages to your passengers.
By using knowledge of time, location, and context you can also promote ancillary services to customers. This can include one last chance to promote existing ancillaries (e.g. a discounted upgrade to premium economy for passenger's who arrive early) and brand new services (e.g. offering a daily ski report to leisure passengers travelling with sports equipment to resort destinations)
Create a win-win for all stakeholders
When implemented well, a virtual concierge has the potential to work for all stakeholders, delivering:
- a better experience for passengers
- increased ancillary revenue for airlines and TMCs
- high conversion rates for advertisers (including airport retailers) through targeting
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