Introduction
According to Statista, “In 2024, the global air traffic passenger demand grew by 11.2 percent compared to the previous year, when the passenger demand increased by 36.8 percent.” The airline industry is returning to normal operations in the post-pandemic era. However, airline companies are now struggling to handle overwhelming amounts of data, get a 360-degree overview of travelers‘ and maintain optimal customer experience at the same time. So, what determines a bright future of aviation industry? Kasmo’s Traveler 360 Data Platform!
Traveler 360 Data Platform is specifically curated for the aviation industry by Kasmo to help companies gather, store and analyze data from multiple sources and create a comprehensive overview of travelers. This 360-degree overview enables companies to make strategic decisions, enhance customer experience and loyalty programs.
As more travelers continue to choose different airline companies according to the service provided to them, competition has been at an all-time high. Research shows that “on average, each US airline is leaving as much as $1.4 billion in annual revenue on the table by not making improvements to their customer experience (CX).”
As the global aviation industry is undergoing a transformation, driven by evolving passenger expectations, it becomes crucial for airline companies to focus on improving their customer experience. Travelers aren’t just buying tickets—they’re seeking convenience, personalization, and tailored airport experiences. Increasing the number of aircrafts to tackle the rising customer demand is not enough anymore, airline companies need to understand how they leverage customer data and create a comprehensive overview of travelers that will help them create better personalization strategies.
By understanding what bothers your customers, what they want and how they want you to solve their pain points, it will help you establish trust in customers. With increasing cybercrimes, travelers are wary of how they are sharing their data with the company. Outlining transparent and clear policies helps customers understand that their data won’t be used for any malicious activities. By creating policies written in clear and simple language, customers can understand how the business intends to use their data. Overcomplicating and using jargon will create suspicion among travelers – and you will potentially lose them to your competitors.
Using a Customer Data Platform (CDP) to store, analyze and use customer data while adhering to data privacy rules is not enough – you need to enhance your CDP and build consolidated travelers’ profiles which will help you personalize airline customer journey and build customer loyalty.
Airline companies need to leverage Kasmo’s Traveler 360 Data Platform that will offer a full view of each passenger’s behaviors, preferences, and engagement patterns across all touchpoints. It’s not just about flying someone from point A to B—it’s about understanding the complete airline customer journey and optimizing every step for maximum satisfaction and loyalty.
In this blog, we’ll explore how the airline industry can tackle increasing customer demand with Kasmo’s Traveler 360 Data Platform created specifically for airline companies and how it can transform the future of aviation industry. Let’s dive in!
Why is it Crucial for the Aviation Industry to Get a Comprehensive View of Travelers’ Profile?
A comprehensive view of passengers is essential for airlines looking to create experiences that go beyond just providing transactional services. Consumers nowadays are tech savvy, and they have become accustomed to hyper-personalized experiences in retail, banking, as well as automotive. Airlines must now meet these same expectations, which requires an in-depth understanding of customer behaviors before, during, and after a flight. Traveler 360 data platform integrates data from booking patterns, loyalty programs, mobile interactions, in-flight behavior, and post-travel feedback to create a unified traveler profile.
Here’s why getting a 360-degree view of travelers’ matter:
- Enhance Personalization: Airlines can suggest ancillary services such as seat upgrades or unlimited lounge access tailored to individual preferences—driving both satisfaction and revenue.
- Improve Loyalty Programs: Knowing when and why customers choose certain flights helps airlines fine-tune loyalty incentives that resonate with high-value passengers.
- Better Operations Management: In times of disruptions like delays or cancellations, airlines can prioritize support for frequent fliers or those with tight connections, improving customer retention.
- Real-Time Decision-Making: When combined with air travel demand forecasting, airlines can make smarter decisions around staffing, route optimization, and pricing strategies.
A single view of the customer allows airlines to move from reactive to proactive service delivery—offering the right customer experience to the right customer, and not a “one-size fits all” customer experience.
Challenges Faced by Airline Industry
Creating 360-degree view of travelers is not easy as it seems – airline companies need to spend considerable amount of time and resources. Understanding these hurdles is the first step to overcoming them and enhancing the customer experience in airlines. As almost every company across different industries is looking forward to implementing AI or has already implemented AI, the airline industry is also not so far behind. According to BCG “airlines will continue to grow the use of AI to drive efficiency and customer satisfaction, with spending anticipated to increase 35% per annum through 2030, reaching close to $10 billion.”
So, what are the hurdles that prevent airline companies from getting a 360-degree view of their travelers?
Data Fragmentation and Legacy Systems
Most airlines operate with legacy or outdated systems that don’t easily share or process data across other platforms. Data from booking systems, check-in software, loyalty databases, and customer service tools are often fragmented and siloed. This fragmentation hinders airline companies from building a unified view of a passenger’s journey and limits the scope of personalization.
Data Privacy and Compliance
As customer data becomes more crucial to delivering personalized service, airlines must navigate stringent data privacy regulations like General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California Consumer Privacy Act California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Customers are increasingly aware of how their data is used. Therefore, airline companies need to ensure that they are maintaining transparency at every step of their journey. Failing to do so will prevent the airline company personalizing services as customers will not trust the company enough to share their personal data.
Evolving Customer Expectations
Passengers today expect hyper-personalization while flying. They want personalized notifications, fast service recovery, and they also want to feel valued more than just a number. Matching these expectations—without overwhelming your employees and delaying services are difficult for airline companies which are still in the process of upgrading their systems and providing technical training to their employees.
Inaccurate Investments and Demand Forecasting
Airline companies need accurate demand forecasting to make informed investment decisions that will improve customer experience. Investing in technologies and platforms that do not serve any purpose prevents airline companies from creating personalized experiences. Sometimes, due to inaccurate demand forecasting, airline companies take decisions based on a “hunch” which doesn’t reap the desired Return on Investment (ROI).
Additionally, airline companies may make the mistake of deviating from their business goals. Maybe what has worked for your competitors in the past, may not work for you! So, invest only in technologies and platforms and create strategies that align with your customer demands and your business goals.
Employee Knowledge Gap
Aviation companies need to provide resources and train their employees to help them understand how they can create a smooth airline customer journey. Due to lack of training and incomplete knowledge, employees often fail to understand what the pain- points of the customer are and how they need to tailor solutions as per the customers’ requirements. This lack of training creates challenges and causes customer dissatisfaction.
How Kasmo Helps the Airline Industry Create the Best Customer Experience
Delivering personalized and seamless experiences is crucial to increase customer loyalty and revenue. The Traveler 360 Data Platform is designed by Kasmo to enable airlines to personalize and improve the customer experience, by identifying travelers across all touchpoints.
With Traveler 360 Data Platform and Snowflake step into a bright future of aviation industry and strengthen your customer engagement now! Check out our travel and hospitality solutions today!
By analyzing customer interaction across multiple channels, this Traveler 360 data platform empowers airlines to execute tailored offers and campaigns that generate a high return on investment (ROI). The ability to track and understand customer behaviors across the entire journey—from booking to post-flight—ensures that airlines can offer services that truly meet travelers’ needs.
However, many airlines still rely on Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) or Master Data Management (MDM) platforms (a system that provides a single, trusted source of information for an organization’s core business data, such as customer, product, or supplier information), to construct a 360-degree view of their customers. These solutions often create gaps in integrating customer data – leaving critical data isolated and making it difficult to gain a comprehensive view. This fragmented data limits the airline’s ability to deliver consistent, personalized experiences across all customer touchpoints.
However, the Traveler 360 Data Platform integrates the best capabilities of CDP and MDM and enables airlines to create a unified traveler profile that provides easy access to business users and data scientists, making it easier for airline companies to create personalization at scale without compromising on violating any data privacy regulation.
Benefits of Traveler 360 Data Platform and How it Can Transform the Future of Aviation Industry
- Unifies Travelers’ Profiles: By using MDM platforms, airlines can create a single, consolidated profile that combines data from multiple sources, including loyalty programs, flight bookings, and interactions across web and mobile channels.
- Enables Real-time Tracking: Leveraging the capability of CDP to store and track customer data and using components like tag management and first-party cookies, airline companies can track activity on web and mobile channels.
- Facilitates Discovering New Travelers: The other capability of CDP allows airline companies to collect activity and identify new users. This provides opportunities for your customer service teams to tap into new audience segments.
- Enables Creating Effective Marketing Campaigns: All customer activity, including loyalty interactions, flight bookings, check-ins, purchases, marketing engagements, and more, is curated in a central data lake. This centralized repository allows for in-depth analysis and insights that can be used to create personalized outbound campaigns, inbound engagement on web and mobile platforms, and targeted customer acquisition campaigns.
- Facilitates Seamless Collaboration: The platform can also integrate with partner ecosystems, enabling airlines to share traveler data with selected partners, without violating any data privacy regulations. This allows for a more comprehensive view of travelers, enabling airlines to further refine their personalization strategies.
Why Choose Kasmo?
Kasmo is a Snowflake Premier Partner with a dedicated team of Snowflake-certified experts at our Center of Excellence (CoE) in Hyderabad, committed to providing you with only the best solutions for your challenges. We are experts at creating tailored solutions for the airline and hospitality industry. Our Traveler 360 Data Platform not only helps you forecast demands but also track revenue and traveler behavior.
- We also help airlines create highly personalized offers and recommendations. By analyzing past behaviors and predicting future preferences, Kasmo enables airlines to deliver tailored promotions, offers, and services that resonate with each traveler.
- Our experts help airline companies optimize pricing strategies and offers. Now adjust flight prices based on demand and customer behavior and create value for every traveler.
- Our Traveler 360 Data platform, designed specifically for the airline industry, helps you make data-driven decisions in real-time, enhancing operational efficiency and improving service offerings. From improving flight schedules to refining loyalty programs, the ability to access and analyze rich customer data empowers airlines to continuously innovate and improve their services.
- Kasmo enhances the effectiveness of airline loyalty programs by delivering tailored rewards and incentives. Through the integration of the Traveler 360 data platform, airlines can offer more personalized rewards, recognizing and rewarding travelers for their loyalty with relevant perks, upgrades, and exclusive offers. This strengthens brand loyalty and encourages repeat business.
- By using Kasmo’s Snowflake-powered Traveler 360 Data platform, airlines can improve their services to meet customer demands and expectations.
Conclusion
The journey towards achieving a comprehensive view of your travelers presents significant hurdles for the airline industry, including fragmented data systems, stringent privacy regulations, and tackling overwhelming demands for hyper-personalization. However, by embracing innovative platforms like Kasmo’s Traveler 360 Data Platform, built on Snowflake AI Data Cloud, airlines can transform these challenges into opportunities and revolutionize the future of aviation industry. This platform empowers airlines to break down data silos, gain actionable insights into individual passenger behaviors, and deliver truly personalized experiences across every touchpoint. Investing in Snowflake and partnering with Kasmo helps airline companies enhance customer satisfaction, foster loyalty, optimize operations, and drive revenue growth.
