An interesting analysis has been carried out by Amadeus into how far out from their departure date travellers purchase the different elements of their trip. A snippet of the results was disclosed by Gillian Gibson, Group VP Amadeus, at the Travolution Summit yesterday in London.

Published: 23 Apr 2009

An interesting analysis has been carried out by Amadeus into how far out from their departure date travellers purchase the different elements of their trip. A snippet of the results was disclosed by Gillian Gibson, Group VP Amadeus, at the Travolution Summit yesterday in London.

The results compiled from 80 travel websites showed that customers purchased their flight 44.1 days from departure, their hotel 41.7 days from departure and their car hire 19.4 days out from departure.

For those travel companies in the business of selling ancillary products and services this is a very interesting finding. Many airline and train sites still push their ancillary products and services at the initial point of purchase. Carefully timed marketing for the ancillary product offering could serve to increase conversion significantly.

Adequate technology for travel companies to promote and sell their ancillary products and services is not quite there yet, Gibson admits however it is something that Amadeus (and Sabre, Datalex, CarTrawler as it happens) are working hard to provide.

As Gibson said yesterday, ancillary revenue offers the opportunity for airlines to add cash straight to their bottom lines. Indeed, United airlines made $500 million in bag check alone. From Amadeus’ findings, unbundling the air product offers the highest ROI for the airline.

Allegiant Airlines in the US are the most successful airline when it comes to ancillary earnings. 20.4% of their earnings come from ancillary products and services in comparison to 18% Ryanair, 15.8% easyJet.

Monarch airlines’ Managing Director of scheduled services, Liz Savage, joined the panel debate at the summit. Interestingly, Monarch has chosen to remove their flight offerings from the GDSs as they are confident that they can distribute their services directly.

It will certainly be interesting to watch the developments in the technology used by airlines to get ancillary products and services to the customer. This will be a hot topic at EyeforTravel’s Ancillary Revenue & Partnerships in Travel Europe conference, next month in London. Sabre, Datalex and CarTrawler will be contributing to the technology debates joined by leading travel suppliers and intermediaries.