Good afternoon, everyone!
I am happy to see that we are having this year more and more airlines and systems.
This is proving one thing, is that you still see a lot of innovative standards.
And we are on the stage today because we understand that innovation is enabled by standards.
Innovation at scale.
When you have a big standard, you can innovate and you can scale your innovation.
Today, in fact, I will not speak really about innovation that will change the world for airlines.
I will try to see how we are tackling the specific issues that you see for travelers.
So sometimes we forget about the traveler.
So this innovation is more about the traveler, and it is not a product.
It is not a fancy product, artificial intelligence, it is about product delivery.
About the implementation.
So we did a great job in reissuing tickets.
You remember that for travel agencies in the past, reissuing tickets was
the most painful task.
It was also the main source of errors.
You did a great job, because you filed these famous Category 31.
Reissuing conditions are now filed.
Ninety percent of the bookings in Amadeus and in all systems are covered by these conditions.
We are doing our job on our side and systems have created these transactions, in Amadeus
it's Ticket Changer, that create a good experience for the travel agent.
Now we can change a ticket in a few clicks or a few entries.
So it looks like this problem is solved for the travel agent.
We have also developed web services, APIs, so that online travel agencies, TMCs, can
implement these services, and they can do self-servicing on their website
or mobile application.
So, again, it looks like the traveler is fine, he can do the self-service.
But do you know what is the most frequent question today?
In a travel agency call center?
Why people are calling a call center or their travel agent on the phone?
This question is, Can I change my ticket?
Still today 70% of calls are around this.
And you know why?
In 90% of the cases, the answer to this question is either No, or the penalty is so high that
the passenger is giving up.
Can you imagine the experience for the passenger?
The perception of the travel agency, and through the travel agency, the travel provider,
when you are waiting on a hotline for a negative answer?
Thirty percent of calls.
Despite all of the filings and everything.
So we have looked at that.
How can we fix that?
How can we empower the traveler, but not only a few travelers, or only North American travelers,
or European travelers?
All travelers all over the world.
How can we empower them to know if they can change their ticket
and to perform the changes themselves?
We have looked at that with the result of reducing the call centers' 70 percent.
And of course, at the end, improving the customer satisfaction.
In all other business, if you have a problem in the indirect channel, the provider of the
product, in non-air products, will have a bad effect.
We need to improve that.
What's the idea?
The solution of this, for us, was to create this Amadeus Ticket Changer White Label.
So what does it mean?
It's a solution where everyone can have access to the information on mobile or desktop, but
the true small innovation we put is no API implementation.
Nothing.
A travel agent with no IT can use it.
You know why?
Because the solution is just a simple URL.
A URL for each of the travel agencies.
This URL will just drive to a simple, optimized flow--can I change my ticket?
You have the answer.
And the reissue flow, with the shopping, including the penalties, you have all the information.
You can book, you can ticket, all of this is done under the travel agency brand because
the customization of the page is done so the actual implementation of this is just writing
a URL address on the itinerary receipt or putting a button with a URL on an existing
mobile application.
Nothing more.
So suddenly, you can have millions of passengers having access to this information even if
they sold that ticket in the street.
So we do that, of course you need to test your MVP, so we did that with Selectour, a
French chain with 1000 agencies in the streets.
They just put this famous URL in their itinerary receipt emails or even paper and on mobile.
And suddenly, they just sent by mail a logo and official color of the company, which is
a kind of orange, here.
We customize so it's looking like the brand of the travel agency.
And suddenly all of their travelers do have access to this information and can change a ticket.
But the travel agency did not implement anything.
So even APIs, the benefits of JSON, all this fancy technology is already, is sometimes
too much for some travel agencies.
The effect of that is that a part of your travelers do not benefit from your filing
in Category 31.
All of this effort you've done to improve the service still leads to the passenger waiting
sometimes a long time on the hotline of the travel agency.
So it's time, I think, to think about innovation--not only on the product side, because a good solution
is good customer service,
a good product, and good implementation because you want to reach everyone.
So I think that's fine and I have no red lights, so I'm very happy.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Hervé, a very good presentation.
So I liked that Amadeus was not selling a product there.
No, never.
So, in terms of that innovation, how could ATPCO sort of help take that to the next level?
Yeah, that's a good point because I mentioned there are a lot of reissues. You know why,
because we have this 90 percent coverage, but please file Category 33 for refunds, because if someone
says, Can I get my ticket refunded,
we have only 52 percent of our bookings covered by this.
So please file Category 33!
And ATPCO I hope you can help us to achieve this refund side.
Okay.
And one of your points is that travel agencies don't have to be up on JSON or some of the
other technologies in order to be able to take advantage of this.
No.
They just need a piece of paper or they can even print on a T-shirt or write it by hand.
It's just a URL address.
And how would that get out to the travel agencies who would then get it out forward?
Who would be, sort of, advancing it?
What other partners would play a role in helping this get to agencies?
So, in fact, we have a full network presence in the world.
People can just contact Amadeus, travel agencies of course.
But it will be extremely easy and the delivery will be self-servicing, in fact.
Fantastic, Hervé, thank you so much.
Thank you.
We appreciate it.
Have a good one.