An Imaginary Trip to the Airline Experience Marketplace

Join Ricardo’s wife Mélanie as she is influenced to plan a trip to Morocco...

My wife Mélanie was following top Moroccan chef Mourad Lahlou in San Francisco through Instagram, a social media network focused on photo and video sharing.

She decided to log in to the Airline Experience Marketplace (AEM), where she maintains several travel and experience playlists. As she logged in, AEM had created a recommended playlist for a trip to Morocco based not only on what she had liked and preferred within AEM itself, but also through her Instagram and other social media engagement.

Last year Mélanie had added a budget for 2022 and ticked options for ‘no travel restrictions’, ‘solo’, ‘family’ and ‘retail’, creating a few playlists to bundle recommended content on things to do that make fun combos in the process.

AEM showed Mélanie a separate bundle with tables comparing budget trade-offs, some more towards different accommodation and luxury categories, others more for culinary and beverage experiences. It also helped Mélanie understand the cost of upgrading the flight experience in the context of shopping in Morocco – the opportunity cost. As a teaser AEM had also recommended a Moroccan cookbook, shipped today, if she made a purchase.

Mélanie saw that the recommendations ranked high on a combined metric of travel platform reports from GetYourGuide and Tripadvisor, as well as her own influencers across social media. The child-friendly score of the pottery classes by Karima in Moroccan city Marrakesh particularly got her attention. The layout of potential experiences from seeing the Atlas Mountains and three valleys (without the camel ride for our 2-year-old), the Ouzoud falls, and the proposed cooking class with local chef Khmisa all fit well to balance the experience.

The recommended Madarin Oriental hotel seemed perfect but was flagged as pricey compared to the Hilton. Becoming a Mandarin fan would mean flying Premium Economy on Air Canada with an economy connection on Air France rather than business class all the way featuring Air Canada’s Signature Class flat beds over the water. AEM showed helpful videos and photos of the hotel and air travel alternatives seats to help Mélanie make her decision. The price was displayed with up-front and buy-now-pay-later options, each with a loyalty points bonus to help sweeten the deal.

Every time Mélanie clicked on an activity she saw other recommended experiences and their impact on her budget and spend. She chose:

·      Palmaraie buggy trip

·      Traditional Berber night with free babysitting at the hotel.

Critically, Mélanie was not overwhelmed by the choice so the decisions were easy to make – AEM showed her what they thought she would find both most to her liking and within her budget. And when products were combined Mélanie got better and better deals. Mélanie knew that confirming her basket and being able to control all changes through her PDA would be the most hassle-free way to enjoy her trip and make changes along the way.

Of course the Airline Experience Marketplace does not exist today. But in this marketplace article, I described using a data lakehouse to build in all the commercial logic, using convolution algorithms toward an end customer goal. It supports the digital assistant, gives customers control using their rules, and allows the presentation of offers to be optimised to meet their goals. Below is a simplified rendering of the “pull” and permission-based marketplace with decentralised offers.

Airlines can only become truly data-centric if they become goal-centric.

Building transformational roadmaps to simplify a coherent commercial optimisation toward more sophisticated customer propositions is needed. But they have to be perfected from an execution standpoint taking the perspective of the customer. It transcends departments defined today.

Where would you start? Let us show you your options, how and help…

ricardo DOT pilon AT millavia DOT com

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