– Christian, as we see, the passenger journey becomes more and more digitized. Could you tell us about the most significant moments in this path when passengers go digital?
– Before talking about digital, I’d like to talk about the five key moments that we see in passenger journey. First one being when the passenger is wondering “Where am I going to go? What do I want to do?” He is looking for inspiration. Then, when the passenger gets an idea where he wants to go, the next piece is “okay. How can I go there? What does it cost? What are the options?” When the passenger would start to search. Third moment is when passenger has searched, he has seen different offers and he is ready to book or to buy a trip, which is the important moment for all travel vendors because that’s when they will collect money. Passenger buys the trip; some time passes; and the fourth moment comes when the trip is becoming closer, and the passenger is ready, he is going to the airport and is travelling. The fifth biggest moment is when the passenger is back home, the travel is really finished, and it’s time to get him ready for his next trip, so it’s also a defining moment for any travel vendor.
– All these moments already exist. The question is how to make them work effectively, so that airlines, airports and all the other service providers could use such moments more efficiently?
– Indeed. These phases are natural parts of a travel or a journey. The digital world brings big opportunities to connect the moments better, because through these moments different travel vendors or travel providers are interacting with passengers, and to also connect all those vendors as an ecosystem. When a traveler searches, with a travel agency or a metasearch engine, with Google, with Facebook, with social reviews, so, this is a very wide world. And then from the point of travelling, another moment of wide world, because first there is a taxi or a bus to the airport, then what happens at the airport, then there is interaction with the airlines, then on destination they go to hotel, they buy tour services, so the number of actors is very large. Historically they used to be caring of their own very small piece of the business. Now, is this efficient for traveler? I doubt it is, because obviously the traveler sees his journey as a continuum, rather than small slices. So, the real big improvement for travelers is how can you deliver, as an ecosystem, this continuum, how the ecosystem of travel vendors organizes itself to share the data, to collaborate, to better service the traveler.
– Yes. First we see websites, then person goes to mobile applications, now we talk about the possible use of chat-bots. May be, we would end up with personal digital assistant like Siri, which will take care of all the process and we will communicate with just one digital person who will answer all my questions.
– The channels of interactions, the technology to interact with a traveler is getting much more varied, I would even mention virtual reality, which makes a good service at the destination: when you look at your mobile phone and it gives you enriched information about the context around you. So, really, the ways of interacting with travelers through technology is getting richer and wider and offers new possibilities.
– Okay. The next challenge is to make these services less annoying. Because, all the chatbots are interacting with you basically the same way: “Hello, How can I help you?”, and actually it’s not very pleasant for a user.
– If I understand the question correctly, yes, we need to develop and design the technologies in such a way that they are relevant and useful, but not invasive. And we also need to design the technology so that it asks for permission to use the traveler’s data, because sometimes I don’t want to be marketed things to. Probably, I want to say ‘yes, this is of interest to me’, and ‘no, don’t come with this to me’.
– I think that is very interesting. May be, you would say a few words about the integration of all market players – airlines, travel agencies, airports – as mobility providers, because from the customer point of view, they are all parts of the same journey. May be they also need to be combined somehow?
– That’s definitely where we at Amadeus would like the world to go to, and we would like to help the world move in that direction. But first, there is a bit of a business obstacle to overcome – we need all the players to see themselves as adding value to each other rather than competing with each other. Once you overcome that idea, it’s about how you enable it. To enable that, you obviously need technology behind to share the data across different vendors, and that’s the core business of Amadeus, where we want to help deliver memorable journeys to the travelers.
– So, that’s the role of Amadeus as the technology provider?
– Absolutely!
– In conclusion, what is your opinion about this conference? Just in few words?
– The first thing I’d like to note is it’s very rich, it gathers players and actors from different sectors – particularly, here are a lot of airports and airlines, but there are also some technology companies and also hotels, so it is looking into that ecosystem perspective, and it’s pretty rich from that perspective. The other point that I’ve enjoyed quite a lot this morning is that there is a clear view that in order to get there, we need to transform the way we do things. This is a reality. It’s good that it’s spoken about, because the difficult piece here is not the technology, but the transformation.
– Thank you!
