Google Urges Airlines to Reap Rewards From Mobile Disruption
Skift Take
These personalization elements are nice to have, but what startups in the area have so far failed to do is make them essential to consumers. Can airlines succeed where they have failed?
During a standing-room only roundtable session at the World Low Cost Airlines Congress in London, Scott Friesen, the Industry Manager of the Travel Sector at Google, encouraged airlines to embrace mobile and the opportunities created by disruption, and the growth of mobile.
"In the airline industry we think about disruption in a bad sense. My flight was disrupted and my bag was lost, [it's a] bad experience for our passengers. But there's also something to do [with disruption] to minimize the costs for our businesses," Friesen said. "What about disruption as an opportunity?"
Friesen presented examples of positive disruptions in industries like high-end fashion and music, which share parallels with aviation in their high barriers to entry and the dominant presence of legacy brands.
"[They've] been around for decades, and they think they are kind of immune to this sort of disruption. However, some people do see opportunities there," he said.
Those opportunities, Friesen suggests open up through adoption of mobile technology and personalized distribution systems.
"The travel journey is incredibly complicated. The way people are booking their travel is even more so," he said. "Our recent study..shows that, on average, in the UK, people visit 32 different sites before booking their travel, which is an incredi
