Business Aviation
Article | January 28, 2022
Hit by the impact of the COVID-19 slump, airline businesses are enduring a major crisis no matter how recognized they were before. The crisis has pushed airline businesses to re-look at how to manage and operate their operations. It even includes re-positioning in the airline industry’s competitive market landscape.
In a time like this, you need to delve deep when you update your airline brand positioning strategy. Your marketing team will have to be versatile and adapt to a new set of planning strategies. They should be mindful of aspects to reduce risks and overcome challenges that the pandemic caused. It’s time to rise again through hindrances that affected your airline brand image to go down. Let’s throw some light on why brand positioning in marketing has become necessary now.
Importance of Re-positioning of an Airline Brand
Brand positioning in marketing is receiving snowballing attention in airline marketing today. Adopting versatile branding concepts creates optimism to provide value to products and services. And such concepts help products and services to perform well on various distribution channels.
The values play an active role in brand positioning and so in re-positioning. Since customers’ activities have transformed in the new era of digitalization, deciding afresh on values will help you position your brand for the future. The branding must include a proper blend of physical and emotional values to make the brand both powerful and meaningful.
When faced with challenges, it’s natural for even large airline businesses to become unrecognizable by customers. Thus, showcasing your brand as unique as possible becomes hard-hitting to differentiate from the competition. In that case, the idea of re-positioning requires consistent branding strategies. The strategies can help in many ways. A few of them are maintaining customer loyalty, encourage awareness, and showing customers your presence in the market.
Therefore, to build deeper relationships with customers by re-positioning your airline brand, there are some important steps to follow. The stepwise guide will help in creating a competent brand positioning framework development. But remember, the framework should be defendable for growth.
6 Steps to Follow: Re-position your Airline Brand
Determine your Values
Start by considering the values that will represent your airline business brand. By finding the values, it will make you different from the rest of the competitors. Especially in a case where you are going for product marketing or service as an ordinary in the market or marketing it extraordinarily.
Your aim gives you essential insight into what and how to go with the brand again in the new normal. Thus, try to analyze and research aspects of your competitors as well.
We fight every day to stand out. We know our customers like to sound and feel authentic about brands. So, we believe that instead of building a complex picture of our airline brand (where no one will be able to understand), we prefer humanization.
- Kevin Krone, the Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Southwest Airlines.
In realizing this aspect, your marketing team can innovate by creating campaigns to improve brand image.
Identify the Competitors Surrounding and Research
After recognizing the brand values, it’s requisite to analyze competitors serving in the market as you. You can do it by performing competitor analysis. The analysis will help to decide how better you can do in creating your brand positioning strategy.
To start with it, there are different methods for determining your competition. They are:
Do a thorough competitor research
You can take guidance from your sales team to study what and how competitors develop their distinctive ideas with sales. Then, identify them through in-depth market research on their tactics of positioning their brand. To conduct it, include the following points into your research:
What are the services or products competitors do offer?
What are the brand positioning strategies they are using to ensure success?
What is the current position of their brand in the market?
It will be easy for you to set your aim to re-position your airline brand by putting these considerations forefront.
Take Feedbacks from customers
Connect with your existing and potential customers. Try to know what services or products they are considering according to the present scenario.
Use the power of social media
Social media platforms like LinkedIn, Quora, Facebook, and other online forums offer interaction with consumers. You can ask questions about products and services. Use these forums to discover competitors in your role.
Find your Brand’s Uniqueness
Building a unique brand image (by keeping a similar aim as before) will make you different from the competitors in the airline industry.
We are the same exact airline that we were before. We are not walking away from our DNA.
- Kevin Krone
Your well-researched step on competitors will help to learn about branding patterns in the new normal. In addition, by looking at their weaknesses and strengths, you might get a chance to know your strength. This aspect will make your brand unique.
Develop a Re-positioning Statement
Once you know your customers' thoughts, you need to develop a statement that portrays your message. If you aim to convey that your business offers the best services or products in the market during the current economic slump, then it’s imperative to keep a razor-sharp focus on a brand positioning strategy.
For example, you can include your ROI data. Use it as a statement in online paid ads, social media platforms, campaigns, emails, and other marketing methods. By doing this, you will be able to grab your existing and potential customers’ attention. And see how potential ones become loyal towards your business in no time.
There’s no definite way to re-position your existing airline brand in times of the pandemic. But there are some crucial ways to do it. The ways are customizing efforts enable significant chances to offer quality services and products to reach customers.
Test your Re-positioning Statement—if it works!
Once your re-positioning statement is formed, it’s time to test it. Try to do experiments with the help of feedback collection from customers. The feedbacks should cover if they are conveyed with the right message. Therefore, in this way, you can know whether your brand achieved its goal or not.
As you invest effort and time into re-positioning your airline brand, it’s helpful to keep in mind the type of consumers, demographic segmentation, and verticals. These verticals provide a deep insight that content and its aim remain advantageous to your brand.
Develop your Brand’s Reference Frame
Your brand’s reference will be an accurate way for customers to perceive it in the right way. Having a genuine brand positioning framework today is vital for re-positioning. And with the help of an on-point brand development strategy, you can plan it extraordinarily. Once you have created the frame of your brand, it is advisable to keep a focus on reaching achievable goals.
Successful Re-positioning Efforts Drives Growth
As you are aware that a strong branding of an airline business makes all the difference when you enter the market, similarly, re-positioning also makes a difference when you have to outshine again amid challenges. So, having a definite approach will ensure success for your brand and drive growth amid the ongoing pandemic challenges.
Frequently Asked Questions
How can airline businesses improve their brand image?
An airline business runs with a multitude of functionalities. Every function plays a responsible role in improving the brand image. Thus, some crucial ways are discussed below:
Create the right message which should be synonymous with brand value or perspective
Stay in contact with customers through various marketing ways
Keep track of strategies and implementation
Turn data into intelligence
Keep an eagle eye on competitors and their activities
Keep employees in the loop
What are the best branding strategies for airline businesses?
The best branding strategies for airline businesses are as follows:
Cost control strategies
Social media campaigns
Creative advertisement
Loyalty programs
Use power of influencers
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Stay in contact with customers through various marketing ways
Keep track of strategies and implementation
Turn data into intelligence
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Keep employees in the loop "
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Air Transport
Article | July 15, 2022
The UK government has announced that from 11th February, fully vaccinated passengers arriving into the country will no longer have to take COVID-19 tests on arrival. The news follows the removal of pre-departure testing for fully vaccinated UK-bound passengers this month.
The relaxation of testing measures is something the aviation industry has been actively campaigning for, as it removes barriers to travel. Just today, IATA distributed a press release advocating for similar moves to be made by further governments. It cited a study focused on the UK carried out by Oxera and Edge Health which found that because Omicron is now highly prevalent in the UK, “if all travel testing requirements were removed there would be no impact on Omicron case numbers or hospitalizations.”
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Design and Engineering
Article | January 7, 2022
Is the aviation industry finally reviving after the devastating 2020? If yes, then what will it show in the next five years?
2020 will be remembered in airline history as the most turbulent year to date. Due to the pandemic, the period brought massive changes in the airline industry—business models and customer behavior globally. As a result, regaining customer confidence and reforming business models have become a critical factor for airlines to uncloud the economic storm and remain a formidable competitor in the years of uncertainty ahead.
Technologies that were being used before the pandemic are now being studied well with vividness. The inclusion of new technologies is onboarding, which somehow sets up new aviation industry trends. These will be a timely solution to fight the ongoing economic instability and challenges pouring in.
To increase safety notions, boost business confidence, customer trust, and making airline operations more efficient, adaptability and high intelligent business outline is the new blueprint for survival and growth to happen in the next five years.
Drivers of Emerging Trends
The intention of emerging trends in the airline industry is from weak signals from a wide range of fields, including threats, technology, and potentiality to function remotely, impacting the industry’s all-over operational dynamics.
The trends are setting primarily due to the winds of change pounding the industry from different directions. Be it from technological, demographical to environmental shifts. Understanding the potential business landscape is therefore critical to ensure what the future of air travel will be.
During a study conducted by IATA, business leaders in the airline industry identified the most critical drivers of emerging trends that were probable to have an influential impact by 2035. Also, these drivers suggest bringing more and more opportunities in business models and operational models of the industry beyond 2020.
Therefore, it is the hope of all airline companies (you) that how you will be affected by future developments and how the entire business landscape will be changed by the trends discussed here. So, take advantage of the opportunities that some of these trends may give rise to.
Leading Aviation Trends to Expect
Cybersecurity
Today, the importance of cybersecurity technology in the airline industry is rising. Airlines, now being aware of the downsides of using traditional operational models, is becoming more concerned about delivering high-performance using technology.
With having well-operated cybersecurity functionality onboard, airlines are focusing on becoming more agile to scale their infrastructure. Also, in the next five years, increased connectivity between the real and virtual world, including robots, will eventually end the boundaries between virtual and physical security.
IATA’s research with the London School of Economics found that the aviation industry will invest $15 billion by 2035, thanks to connected operations.
Moreover, as cybersecurity matures, it will be seen as the most secure and scalable way of operating organizational data, and processing will be easier than before. You will have your airline documents within a secured centralized database, which will reduce silos of information that pose security risks and threats.
Biometric Technology
The pandemic, apart from bringing challenges, has helped businesses to leverage influential ideas to foster. Yes, it has made the airline industry emphasize the high usage of biometrics as a must-have technology stack. Biometrics is on the rise that can reinforce the idea of touchless operations in airports.
The airline industry forecast has laid primary focus on self-service. However, as the blend of software and technology is more in demand, applications will be more defined than before in the coming five years. The technology will allow automated checks, self-service systems using devices like mobile, tablets, and others and cover iris, face recognition, fingerprint, which will even work with PPE masks.
The industry is already making great experiences that allow businesses to conduct frictionless operations using biometric software and hardware. For example, in November 2020, Star Alliance introduced a novel interoperable biometric identity scanner platform for screening employees and passengers at airports.
AI & Big Data
Artificial Intelligence (AI) welcomed massive opportunities in transforming aviation business operations amid the ongoing crisis. This technology in the airline industry has immensely aided companies in collecting data and forming a virtual assistance environment for queries, enhanced logistics operation, security, and self-services with highly augmented reality.
A market survey reveals that 97.2% of the aviation companies are installing big data and AI together. In fact, 76.5% of airline companies are gaining the value of data collection with the help of big data and AI. Source: resources.vistair.com
AI is also being set up in terms of safety improvement initiatives and potential safety issues. In this case, Southwest Airlines partnered with NASA to build an automated system capable of preventing potential threats and breaches by using machine-learning algorithms.
Green Technology
Green technology is one of the upcoming trends in the airline industry in the next five years. The prediction is it will make novel changes in the airline industry from various directions like the workforce, shares, stakeholders, and governments.
In the green tech concept, it is the generational shift and advancement that may head the change using new tools. These would bring in notable opportunities beyond 2021.
If you observe, the pandemic has driven the agenda of sustainability in terms of climatic conditions. And you will be surprised to know that aviation has already put up a serious concern in its fossil fuel usage by 2035. Even aircraft manufacturers have begun their journey with green technology.
To clarify this, the main objective of sustainable development for the coming years is decarbonization and green technology investment.
Aviation companies like Japan Airlines and IAG are investing to bring net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, and by 2045, they aim to achieve carbon neutrality. And these, of course, are happening quickly due to digitalization.
Expecting a Sustainable ‘DIGI-TECH’ Future
As the pandemic brought downturn and slowdown in the airline industry, they have prioritized investing in digital by recognizing its importance and the optimum necessity. It is because it will be one of the significant ways for you to bring customers back and show your potential to endeavor services in a changing industry landscape.
So, technology and digital together must be supported that respects businesses’ need to invest in multiple areas of functionality. On the other side, revenue management goals also need to be focused on to gain success among competitors. And following the path of trending digital platforms will make you victorious over revenue management performance objectives. In this way, you will be in the skin of the game and would observe your company rising through the challenges over the coming years.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the topmost technologies that will define aviation beyond 2021?
The technologies—3D printing in manufacturing, automation, and robotics are the topmost that will define how the aviation industry will be beyond 2021.
How is technology being used in aviation?
Airline operators use technology to market their services and products, advancing their software to leverage functionalities like biometrics, automation, cybersecurity, AI, big data, and more. Also, technology is being used to make safer airport operations like touchless checks to make safe for passengers.
Will the aviation industry overcome challenges?
Up until now, globally, the aviation industry is maintaining positive growth, despite prevailing challenges due to COVID-19. Technologically, it seems that the industry will foster slowly and gradually. Yet, there is sluggish growth economically due to high jet fuel prices.
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Aviation Technology
Article | December 3, 2021
Experience is Everything—human or mechanical. But Get it Right.
"AI's potential doesn't solely lie in its ability to improve business efficiency. Rather it lies in its ability to bridge the gap between businesses and customers. AI-powered communications enable for surged personalized and strengthening of information, stimulating customer trust and customer experiences."
- Kevin Gosschalk, CEO, Arkose Labs, in a conversation with Media 7.
Whether you make payments with a single tap in apps, ask Alexa to instruct in your smartphones, select Google assistance to find flights, or connect to airline companies, digital transformation is omnipresent. So, the appreciation comes naturally for how today's digital atmosphere transforms and affects our lives in every way.
Yes, you heard that right!
Using Google assistance to find flights is not the new way the industry uses AI. Instead, it has enhanced its way of AI usage into its process and operations. Like other businesses, aviation businesses are catching up well in using data and technology. With the help of these, they now create more compelling and prompter customer experiences.
The developments and revenues in the global aviation industry are skyrocketing. The industry expects almost 8.2 billion passengers to fly around the world by 2037. The rising numbers are because of digital transformation. The most interesting thing is aviation now has to manage high expectations of digital-savvy customers. It will be even more interesting now!
Before the blog breaks into discussing the futuristic airline customer experience, let's look at the flashback of the past customer experience scenarios (challenges) that prevailed in the airline industry.
Past Customer Experience Scenario in Airline
The aviation industry in 2018 recorded 4.4 billion passengers flying around the world. Furthermore, according to the IATA reports, the count is anticipated to reach 8.2 billion by 2037. But the industry is increasingly lacking behind in customer experience.
Complex booking procedures and missing out on the best flight offers because of complex app/website navigation and other potential customer services are issues raised in air travel today. Apart from this, customers also raise concerns over inflight infotainment systems. The systems merely do their job. Therefore, as many airport terminals are still empty, customer service representatives are working harder to overcome such issues.
As the industry has stepped into the fourth industrial revolution, AI rewards the best experiences for travels and other airline customer services. Now, airline marketers can find diverse AI-based digital solutions to sail through the cloud. And the findings are quite remarkable.
Let's come to the part where you will know how AI is helping the aviation industry scale its customer services.
How Can AI Enrich Airline and Scale Customer Services?
Airlines that leverage AI customer experience have had a significant advantage during the pandemic time. Their insights have been put into enriching the entire aviation business. Let's understand the 'how.'
Get Multiple Output in Seconds
When the demand for air fly rise, offering immediate services for customer handling teams becomes stressful. However, with AI, instances like this get a perfect solution.
AI can handle an infinite number of customers' demands at once. By leveraging AI-based digital solutions, you can scale up fulfilling airline operations in seconds. As a result, teams in your firm can easily diminish the increased demand for services and serve remarkable customer experience.
The benefit of AI can also be seen crosswise support channels. For instance, WestJet's ticket volume surged by 71% on Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp during the beginning weeks of COVID-19 disruption in North America. However, the airline kept its response time low as its virtual agent Juliet ultimately resolved 87% of tickets.
Identity New and Trending Issues
Aviation is an industry of challenges. Issues and obstacles keep knocking on the door of airline companies. In such cases, AI informs if there are any trending issues over channels. For example, during the COVID-19 outbreak, new onboard safety issues and questions towards social distancing surfaced for the first time. However, airlines have never come through about social distancing. So, by leveraging AI, they created a responsive plan for customers. They communicated the same through AI-enabled solutions on websites and applications.
In response to the coronavirus, Gartner suggests that companies should use chatbots in digital channels to focus on the most ordinarily asked questions to give solutions for customers.
Feedback Analysis
Air travel can be stressful at times, even for frequent and experienced travelers. For example, it could be passport-related or booking tickets, baggage checks, ticket prints, arrivals, departures, seat assistance, etc.
So, by analysis of data, artificial intelligence in customer experience learns about these pain points of airports and flight experiences. In this way, customer experience can be improved and enhanced simultaneously.
Then comes feedback. Using AI for feedback analysis, airlines can research the market. It can make informed decisions related to processes and operations.
"AI systems can quickly allow airlines to discover opportunities to intervene in the customer journey and turn a miserable experience into a delightful one. It also allows companies to respond faster in a synchronized and regulated way that is uniform with the business's values. Ultimately, we want to understand how an airline can fascinate a customer as well as where there is an abrasion in the customer journey and figure out how to fix it,"
- CEO of PureStrategy Inc. Briana Brownell
Briana highlights the growing relevance of natural language used in AI. Understanding technology in the processing and analysis of customer experience data thus allows businesses to explore the customer journey in their own words.
For example, ANIE, an AI assistance, can help customers find, book, and pay for flights.
Effective Communication
The speed of responsive communication to customer queries is highly considered to resolve issues. For example, airport issues like flight delays or baggage loss crop up quite often throwing. As a result, travelers usually get into a state of nervousness. However, when they do not get a response or explanation to their problems, they start considering other airlines for their future trips.
In these cases, AI software deployment can speed up and simplify services, automatically enhancing airline customer experience. In addition, effective customer emails with exact information can also solve significant issues and streamline employees' workflow using natural text.
Another way to automate and improve airline customer experience is chatbot development. Today, many airlines enhance their customer support with AI-powered chatbots on their websites and mobile applications.
The Business Insider’s research report says that by 2022, over 80% of airline businesses are likely to have chatbot automation implemented in operations.
These chatbots help passengers with bookings, managing flight schedules, and updating customers about general flight information. In addition, they can post queries and other types of assistance to get quick responses.
Self-Services at Airports
Easy self-check-ins, ticket booths, and overall communication (from booking to destination arrival) add to the comprehensive AI-based digital solutions.
The pandemic forced the aviation industry to witness the extraordinary rise of numerous contactless technologies. So, airports are now more focused on providing self-services for customers. These include contactless payments, luggage checks, robotic assistance for queries, and more like these.
Self-service systems in airports are critical automated systems. AI technology is installed to automate passenger journeys without any hurdles.
Today, airline companies and airports implement an end-to-end solution using artificial intelligence in customer experience to facilitate smooth passenger air travel and operations. In case of point, Delta Airlines, one of the world's largest global airlines, uses intelligent systems such as Fly to Gate by Thales. The system works with biometrics technology. The employees use it for the document scanning process to recognize and verify passengers at security checks.
Such technology reduces passenger check-in time and improves customer experience.
Future of AI Customer Experience in Airline Industry
There are many shreds of evidence that customers increasingly want a personal touch with their communications. They adore personalized services. Even airline companies are seeking profound connections with their customers. And this is the right time to act by offering personalized customer experiences.
Today, AI makes it possible for the entire airline industry to enhance customer experience with automation, provide self-service solutions, ensure safe air travel, and more. Technology is a powerful tool for airlines to make informed decisions that they couldn't take in the past few years. Now airlines can make decisions faster on essential decisions such as on pricing of tickets by analyzing data, enabling secure authentication of customers than before.
Ultimately, the success of artificial intelligence in customer experience is driven by having a deep understanding of different customer segments. By harnessing the power of conversational AI, airline businesses can improve their ROI, nurture long-term customer relationships, metrics being the core elements.
Frequently Asked Questions
How can airline companies improve their customer experience?
To improve customer experience, airline companies can follow these ways:
Focus on knowing the target audience
Meet unique and specific customer needs
Keep customers engaged on social media platforms
Make smart customer-targeted decisions
Be responsive towards customers
How does AI play its role in aviation concerning customer experiences these days?
AI plays a crucial role in helping customers in aviation to find the correct information more efficiently. It actively helps analyze customers' data and recommend services based on their browsing preferences about flights.
How does AI improve customer experience?
AI enables the power to strengthen customer engagement, encourage activities, and improve customer retention. Although not a replacement for human beings, it does help increase the efficiency of serving — like answering frequently asked questions, providing the correct information, and being available 24*7.
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Focus on knowing the target audience
Meet unique and specific customer needs
Keep customers engaged on social media platforms
Make smart customer-targeted decisions
Be responsive towards customers"
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