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Can you sell ancillaries via mobile? MTT thinks so.

04-05-11

 
Can you sell ancillaries via mobile MTT thinks so. image
 

MTT develops new mobile services to boost ancillary sales.

Dublin-based specialist Mobile Travel Technologies Ltd. (MTT) has introduced M2B Ancillaries, a new set of functionality for its M2B mobile travel platform.

M2B Ancillaries gives airlines and hotels a slick, customer friendly way to offer ancillary services via mobile at several stages throughout the journey. With M2B Ancillaries, suppliers can sell ancillary services during the booking flow, during the check-in flow, while customers are viewing their bookings, and even, where appropriate, as completely stand-alone transactions.

Travel suppliers can also use M2B Ancillaries to push SMS and in-App notifications alerting customers to deals, offers and customer service messages.

MTT has already implemented M2B Ancillaries functionality for clients. Functionality includes:

  • Meals
  • Additional Baggage
  • Seat selection
  • Rail tickets and ground transportation
  • Room upgrades and add-ons
  • In-destination activities (e.g. amusement parks, tours)

S7, Russia’s largest domestic carrier, was the first airline to implement the module and now sells Aeroexpress rail tickets via their mobile channel. AirAsia, South-east Asia’s largest low-cost carrier, is currently using M2B Ancillaries to sell a variety of services, including meals, seat selection and additional baggage.

Overall ancillary revenues are expected to increase by 50% in the next five years, with up to 18% of travel suppliers revenues coming from the sale of ancillaries by the year 2015. Third-party ancillary sales are set to grow by 30% over the same period, and to account for 2.5% of total travel providers’ revenues, according to a recent Amadeus-Forrester report. Wider industry revenues are expected to grow by just 3% per year over the same period.

“Mobile is a perfect channel for up-selling ancillaries. It’s an always-on connection and it gives you repeated opportunities to offer an ancillary service, and allows you to make the offer when the customer is most likely to need or want to buy,” said Gerry Samuels, Founder and Executive Director of MTT.

The M2B Ancillaries module can be implemented quickly and supports sales via iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and other downloadable Apps as well as via the mobile web.

M2B is a cross-platform mobile suite for the travel industry. Designed to reduce the cost of deploying mobile services across multiple platforms and devices, M2B serves the specific needs of the travel industry and connects directly to reservations systems as well CMS and even regular websites (transcoding). M2B combines a Write Once, Run Anywhere infrastructure with a fine hand-tuning presentation layer so that the user experience capabilities of each device and platform can be leveraged to provide an exceptional mobile experience.

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easyJet and MTT - The number one travel iPhone app in the UK

12-Dec-11 11:50

 

On Thursday December 8th, easyJet, the UK’s largest airline released iPhone and Android apps, developed by Mobile Travel Technologies Ltd., using our M2B Next Gen mobile travel platform.

The app is the fastest airline booking app available, enabling passengers to book a flight on more than 580 routes in less than 30 seconds! (easyJet Press Release)

Within 24 hours the easyJet iPhone app was the number 1 travel app in the UK!<

Read more...

Can mobile change the way travellers feel about ancillary products?

15-Jun-11 17:39

 
Can mobile change the way travellers feel about ancillary products? image
 

by Gerry Samuels,  Founder and Executive Director

Ancillary sales are one of the most debated issues in the travel industry today. Forrester (with Amadeus) project that by 2015 ancillaries will account for up to 18% of travel suppliers’ revenue.

In their January 2011 study, Cross-Sell Your Way to Profit, they reveal that while traditional third-party services such as insurance, car rental and hotel room sales are expected to remain popular, travel providers see great potential in a range of ‘extreme’, as yet unexploited, products and services.

By 2020, more than half of travel providers expect to offer virtual reality services that can help passengers experience airports, hotels and cruise ships before arrival, digital concierges to improve the in-hotel or airport experience and in-journey spa treatments.

It’s clear that travel suppliers need and want to grow and diversify ancillary revenue. What consumers want is not so clear, and opinions are divided.

Depending on who you ask, consumers want the lowest possible fare with everything unbundled, or they want simple logical bundles and reasonable fares, or they want more value-added options and third party services or they are sick to death of being nickel and dimed to death, and want the whole mess to just go away.

While travel suppliers work to find the right balance for their brand and their customers long term, mobile offers an immediate opportunity to turn the problem on its head.

Front-loading optional ancillary services in your booking process can be effective for some services, but the mobile phone in every travellers pocket means that suppliers can interact with customers at every step of the journey (including planning and pre-trip preparation), and can choose to offer the right ancillary services at the time when the customer is most likely to need or want to buy.

Done well, ancillary sales via mobile will be seen by customers as valuable service, not sales.

Let’s look at some examples:

  • At time of booking offers on ground transportation and airport parking are logical options.
  • At mobile check-in, especially on the return leg of a trip, an offer to skip the queue at security and use the VIP lane could be well received. I know exactly what to expect from the security queue at my home airport, but I might well pay to sail to the front of the queue at O’Hare. This might also be a good time to remind me that I didn’t opt for an in-flight meal.
  • Your flight is delayed for three hours – how about a day-pass to the lounge for a glass of wine with free wi-fi?
  • Just before boarding an airline could push a mobile only offer for extra leg-room or seat upgrade. The extra fee may not have seemed attractive at time of booking, but after an hour in the airport a little extra space seems like a dream come true.
  • A guest booked an executive room and checked-in after midnight; a quick tap on their mobile could order room service coffee for the morning.
  • Guests who book family rooms may appreciate direct mobile booking for local amusement parks or family activities.  Maybe even a reminder about the in-resort babysitting service and available (grown-up) dinner reservations.
  • It’s the night before check-out. The kids are hyped up on sugar and you can’t find little Sally’s left shoe. Would express mobile check-out and a car to the airport tomorrow morning help?

There are a thousand possibilities.

A well developed mobile channel, integrated with your business systems, allows you to offer your customer what they want, when they want it and when they are willing to pay for it.

And that’s something that both travel suppliers and consumers want

(originally published at Tnooz.com)

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