Market Situation
Now, more than ever, airlines are looking to accelerate revenue and identify new sources to grow market share and profitability. For many airlines, a key differentiator and revenue driver is group travel and maintaining relationships with tour operators and travel agencies. Not only does it provide a large revenue source but it can also be a core differentiator in hypercompetitive markets. In recent years, many of these airlines are re-evaluating operations and internal systems to limit costs and create efficiencies.
Revenue Management leaders as well as Group Sales leaders are looking to find new approaches to create better offers, upsell related services, and take control of the many different channels where group offers are sold. Airlines that can provide a differentiated experience when it comes to groups can better compete, drive revenue, and quickly gain market share.
Business Challenges
To drive an improved customer experience and optimize revenue across the channels and markets they operate in, airlines are now forced to do a lot more with a lot less resources. In addition, legacy technologies that were once powerful mission-critical systems are now hampering the adoption of essential approaches such as dynamic pricing and the use of AI that enable airlines to sift through tremendous data and create personalized offers. These challenges are even more acute when it comes to group revenue management and sales.
Group sales-specific problems:
- Uncertainty around the quality or accuracy of pricing to ensure it is driving revenue for the
overall business - Maintaining and growing relationships with key channels, like travel agencies to drive passenger volume and revenue
- Reducing long quote turnaround times stemming from tedious, often manual processes
- Coordinating group policies for both sales and revenue management
- Lack of a single system and data source for all purchasing and ticketing transactions
The Solution
When it comes to group revenue, group sales, and revenue management teams need the right tools to significantly reduce the quote turnaround time, automate approvals, enforce booking policies, and optimize pricing to drive revenue. Without a comprehensive solution, airlines risk losing potential group revenue to competitors.
PROS Group Sales Optimizer (GSO) is an end-to-end group revenue management and sales solution powered by dynamic pricing. With PROS Group Sales Optimizer, airlines can manage group bookings, pricing, contracts, and policies in one location and across all users including travel agents, sales, and revenue management. This degree of automation, where everything before was manual, allows sales teams to be more efficient and process more group requests, meaning more business and incremental group revenue.
Benefits
of PROS Group Sales Optimizer
How PROS Group Sales Optimizer Works: Key Capabilities for Maximized Group Sales Revenue
Sales Interface
The PROS Group Sales Optimizer web-sales interface supports all channels, including travel agents and direct groups provides a seamless buying experience directly on your site or through a customer portal, and increases the likelihood of customer purchases, with automation that reduces service costs.
Booking Management
Travel agents, sales representatives, and revenue management analysts can use a simple, centralized user interface, allowing access to all relevant information, including group ticket history. Easily manage bookings and PNR changes to trip type, travel dates, and number of passengers.
Dynamic Pricing
Provide accurate pricing that is in line with the airline’s demand forecast and booking expectations. PROS pricing algorithm determines both the average marginal cost of providing the seats to the group and the marginal revenue curve of the group.
Contracts and Group Sales Policies
Group Sales Policies (GSP) allow the users to enter very detailed policies to adjust the pricing offered to individual customers on specific routes, at specific times of the year, and more. Group Sales Optimizer also offers contract management capabilities to track and manage different versions of a contract.
Outside Reservation Window
When navigating through uncertainty, airlines need flexibility. The outside reservation window gives groups the opportunity to book a trip outside the normal reservation window by simply escalating a request. The option to plan a trip further in advance provides a better customer experience and a competitive edge.
What Makes PROS Group Sales Optimizer Different
- Easy booking management with a centralized user interface that provides access to all relevant information and supports all channels.
- Seamless workflows across shopping, booking, and itinerary changes for all user types, including travel agent, RM, and sales.
- Group Sales Policies to manage in a single location all policies across RM and sales.
- Interactive alerting and notifications for the escalation process.
- Quoting multiple itinerary options in seconds based on dynamic pricing.
- Scientifically selected prices from a continuous price curve rather than arbitrary, discrete price points.
- Determines and compares both the average marginal cost of providing the seats to the group and the marginal revenue curve of the group.
- Automated and manual review of requests with real-time decision support and recommendations.
Business Outcomes You Can Expect
The benefits of implementing GSO technology:
PROS Group Sales Optimizer Editions
PROS understands that there is no one-size-fits-all for our airline customers. That’s why we created editions that
meet the needs of airlines based on their business goals, strategies, and infrastructure while also allowing for
runway so that airlines can easily adopt additional features as their business grows.
Depending on your current and future needs, the solution is available for purchase in the three editions below:
Key Feature | GSO Essentials | GSO Advantage | GSO Ultimate |
---|---|---|---|
Dynamic Pricing Using published Fares | |||
X | |||
X | |||
X | |||
Save Offers | |||
X | |||
X | |||
X | |||
Download PDF Offers | |||
X | |||
X | |||
X | |||
Book a Request | |||
X | |||
X | |||
X | |||
Advanced Contract Management | |||
X | |||
X | |||
Booking Management of Group PNR-increase, Decrease, Split, Cancel, and Edit Itinerary | |||
X | |||
X | |||
RM Override of Fares and Other Components | |||
X | |||
X | |||
RM Override of Contractual Timelines | |||
X | |||
X | |||
PNR Synchronization and Load | |||
X | |||
X | |||
Negotiation | |||
X | |||
X | |||
Reporting | |||
X | |||
X | |||
Integration and Airline's Payment Gateway | |||
X | |||
Ticketing | |||
X | |||
Managing Post-Ticketing Changes | |||
X | |||
EMD Handling | |||
X | |||
Request and Price Ancillaries | |||
X |
Available Integrations
- Integrates with Sabre PSS
- Integrates with Amadeus PSS
PROS Cloud
- Full application service management and SLA
- Tier 3, SOC 2 data centers
- High performance and availability
- ISO 27001
- Industry-standard firewalls and intrusion
- detection/prevention
- All customer instances and data are logically isolated
- Enterprise change management program
including security patching on all systems
LEARN MORE
For more information on this or any of our products, please contact PROS at PROS.com or call 1-855-846-0641.