A machine learning platform aims to lessen travel woes associated with overbooked flights, and open up new revenue streams for airlines.
Many airlines routinely overbook flights on the assumption that some passengers will not show up. In cases where everyone does, however, front-line staff must resort to a scattershot system of convincing passengers to give up their seats at the gate. Atlanta-based travel technology company Volantio has developed a platform for the airline industry, called Yana, which uses machine learning algorithms to analyse passenger data and advance-target those most likely to volunteer. Airlines can then contact passengers ahead of time to offer alternative seats and incentives. Major airlines such as British Airways, JetBlue and Qantas are giving it a serious look.
Volantio’s focus is on “post-booking revenue and capacity optimisation”; that is, enabling airlines to mine fluctuations in demand for opportunities after flights have been booked. This could include moving willing passengers off high-demand flights to free up tickets for sale to last-minute travellers at a premium. It could also help alleviate another airline industry headache – that of rebooking displaced passengers whose flights have been disrupted, for example by weather – by freeing up seats.
“It gives airlines the ability to generate some extra revenue while making two other parties better off – the flexible traveller and also the last-minute traveller who might not have been able to get a seat because the flight was sold out,” Volantio CEO Azim Barodawala said.
In order to be contacted, passengers must first opt in to the system. “There are huge privacy concerns over who can be contacted. The partners with whom we’ve worked so far typically have a setting in their marketing permissions that permit us to reach out to them,” said Barodawala.
The start-up travel technology firm raised $2.6 million in a recent funding round, led by Ingleside Investors, representing the New York-based Israel family, and a cluster of major airlines including JetBlue, Qantas and International Airlines Group (IAG), an Anglo-Spanish airline holding company which owns British Airways, Vueling, Iberia and Aer Lingus, among others. IAG has also established a multimillion-pound fund to expand its digital capabilities, Reuters reports.
