The Finnish Border Guard will allow passengers on selected Finnair flights to and from the UK to pass through border control at Helsinki Airport using new Digital Travel Credentials (DTC) from 28 August 2023.
25.08.2023 - 14:45 / skift.com / Sean Oneill / Seth Borko
Airlines used to lean on online travel agencies to find customers. But now in something of a turnabout, airlines have enough loyalists that online travel companies are, in some cases, providing services to airlines to help them sell upsells and packages directly.
Executives from Expedia Group and JetBlue discussed the changed dynamic on Wednesday at Skift Aviation Forum 2022 in Dallas-Fort Worth in a conversation with Seth Borko, senior research analyst at Skift Research.
Expedia Group has been attempting to take the sales and distribution knowledge it’s built up in its consumer business and apply that to business-to-business services, as Skift has reported. The online travel giant helps airlines learn how to better put together and sell upsells and packages to the airline’s customers.
“If an airline thinks, ‘Hey let’s put this in there, and if you build it, they will come,’ it probably won’t work,” said Julie Kyse, vice president, global air partnerships — who leads the team responsible for Expedia Group’s relationships with airlines.
“You need to make sure you’ve got the right placements with the right discoverability on the website,” Kyse said. “We have a lot of expertise along these lines.”
JetBlue does get some non-air supply from Expedia to help create packages to sell to its customers. But in the past few years, it has built JetBlue Travel Products — a collection of ventures to try to create its own institutional knowledge on selling direct.
The business unit relaunched JetBlue Vacations, launched Paisly — which “offers travelers trip add-ons such as rental cars, hotels, and theme park tickets, tied to their JetBlue reservations“) — and this year debuted Troupe, a group trip booking planner app.
JetBlue Travel Products is small but growing. It’s on track to generate about $100 million in earnings before interest and taxes this year. That pales compared to the billions in revenue the parent airline company forecasts to make this year, but it’s a significant profit in an often thin-margin sector.
Expedia, set to generate billions in revenue this year, doesn’t feel threatened by the direct selling efforts of airlines such as JetBlue. The company instead sees direct airline sales of non-air products as one segment as part of a bigger pie, with the overall pie getting larger.
“There are customers that have a natural affinity for JetBlue, and we appreciate that JetBlue has a relationship with them, and we want to help them grow that relationship,” Kyse said. “It’s up to us to build in a certain amount of stickiness on our own sites by investing in loyalty programs and things that drive people to continue to come to Expedia’s brands.”
Expedia can also provide broader insights for its partners about
The Finnish Border Guard will allow passengers on selected Finnair flights to and from the UK to pass through border control at Helsinki Airport using new Digital Travel Credentials (DTC) from 28 August 2023.
Qatar Airways' award-winning business class is not the airline's only money-maker.
This summer’s travel boom is showing no signs of slowing down during the Labor Day weekend, especially for the growing number of Americans looking to vacation overseas.
Can airlines reduce the total hydrocarbons they burn? Aviation plays a role in the climate emergency, contributing an estimated 3 percent of the world’s carbon emissions a year.
The vice chairman and CEO of Expedia Group, Peter Kern, covered a lot of ground during his session at Skift Global Forum in New York City in September. Kern gave his perspective on mergers and acquisitions, technology, and micro-services.
Aviation contributes only about 3 percent of the greenhouse gases that worsen climate change, but airplanes don’t have good options to switch away from hydrocarbons. So aviation risks becoming a target for anger among green activists, threatening the long-term viability of mass-market leisure flights.
Good morning from Skift. It’s Thursday, November 17. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.
Delta Air Lines has been directing more investment at enhancing what its customers experience at airports, and it relies on customer sentiment surveys to guide its progress.
The dynamics of ancillary travel product distribution for airlines is continuously changing. Brand loyal customers are the order of the day. Yet in symbiotic ecosystems where airlines use online travel giants like Expedia to tailor their travel packages, competition for loyal customers is unavoidable.
In Skift Research’s latest report check in on the current state of Expedia Group and Booking Holdings, the big two online travel agencies in the U.S. and Europe, as they recover from the Covid-19 pandemic.
Delta Air Lines is striving to boost its customer satisfaction scores, and the effort is led by Allison Ausband, executive vice president and chief customer experience officer. Ausband oversees about 60,000 workers in Delta’s airport customer service, in-flight service, and reservations and customer care divisions.
Executives from the venture capital arms of three large travel companies — JetBlue, Alaska Airlines, and Amadeus — each shared details with Skift about what they are focused on in 2023 and going forward.