Monarch Airlines Becomes Newest Navitaire Travel Commerce Customer

Admin — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 05:18:49 +0000

[Exerpted from an article authored by Navitaire originally found here on 21-Dec-2011]

Last month, Monarch Airlines became the latest Navitaire customer to add Travel Commerce services. Monarch Airlines is in a great position to take advantage of several new features delivered in Travel Commerce release 3.2 plus integrated features supported in New Skies 3.4.2.

With the adoption of Travel Commerce, Monarch Airlines moved from selling ancillary services for car hire using a “White Label” model to selling the services directly in the customer online booking flow. Multiple studies have shown that carriers can achieve a much higher uptake of ancillary sales when those products are offered in the booking flow. White Label sites offer ancillary services using a separate booking link, requiring the customer to view the offers and book the services through an alternate site, reservation, and payment process. This often requires consumers to re-enter information about their travel plans, and increases the risk that they may comparison shop and ultimately book the ancillary services through another site.

Laurie Diffey, Group Technology Director at The Monarch Group, commented, “We are very pleased to see this development go live. Implementing Travel Commerce has been a significant project for 2011, involving close working with Navitaire to assess the benefits and gaps with the solution, to have Navitaire address those gaps through product development, and then of course integration and testing. It also required an [Monarch Airlines] upgrade of the back-end New Skies platform which was a project in its own right! It’s still early days since the launch, and we are still assessing the true benefit on the conversion rate, but early indications do show an increase in conversion rate.”

Besides launching its own new Travel Commerce services, Monarch Airlines also established a new “first” for the Travel Commerce offering in the European region. Monarch Airlines became the first European-based Navitaire client to sell Avis cars directly in the online booking flow. Avis is one of the world’s best known and largest car hire brands with 5,100 locations in more than 165 countries. Avis offers travelers convenient airport and off-airport locations, a wide variety of quality cars to choose from, and has earned customer service and loyalty awards based on good value and friendly service.

Customers who book flights via www.monarch.co.uk (SkySales®) or the Monarch Airlines call center (SkySpeed) can now also book and pay for their Avis car rental at the same time through New Skies and Travel Commerce. Shoppers are offered the full list of available Avis vehicles based on the destination, date and time of their arrival and departure at the destination. They can tailor the car rental period to match their trip arrival and departure dates, or reserve a car for less than their entire stay. It also gives passengers the option to make Avis bookings at the same time as the flight booking, or to add it at a later time either online or via the call center.

The integrated Avis booking option is likely to be the first of many Travel Commerce offers that Monarch Airlines plans to promote to its customers. Watch the Monarch Airlines website over the coming months for further developments.

Laurie further commented that “The input from Navitaire was crucial to this project. Navitaire were very open to partnering in the development, and hit some challenging deadlines. Now that Travel Commerce is live, we will be working to plug in further connectors, to drive both additional revenue and improved offerings to our customers.”

The latest releases continue to build on the Travel Commerce system’s ability to provide a flexible platform to help carriers gain a greater share of consumers’ travel wallet, enhance customer loyalty, and access more advanced tools to compete with other travel sites.

NSK

Monarch Airlines Becomes Newest Navitaire Travel Commerce Customer