Let’s first explore some compelling data:

• According to Jay Sorensen, airline ancillary revenue experienced a staggering 56% surge, reaching a remarkable $102.8 billion in 2022 (IdeasWork and CartTrawler, press release, 2023).
• A number of Low-Cost Carriers (LCCs) have achieved remarkable success by capitalizing on ancillaries. The 2022 CarTrawler Yearbook of Ancillary Revenue reveals some notable examples: In 2021, Wizz Air generated a remarkable 56% of its total revenue from ancillaries. Frontier, 54.9% (2021). Spirit Airlines, 54.3% (2021). Allegiant, 51.3% (2021)
• 45% of consumers willingly choose to enhance their travel experience by adding additional services such as checked baggage, large carry-on bags, advance seat assignments, priority boarding, food and beverages, and Wi-Fi access (IdeasWork and CartTrawler, press release, 2023).

By implementing Fairlyne, airlines can optimize their ancillary sales and achieve remarkable results. 

Here’s how:

1. Increased Ticket Sales, Increased Ancillaries: Fairlyne’s riskless approach to overbooking results in more ticket sales for the same flight, thereby creating more opportunities for ancillary revenue generation. As the same seat is sold twice, your ancillary sales per flown passenger will greatly increase.
2. Higher Price Tickets, Higher Ancillaries: The Fairlyne approach results in you not only ensuring that you won’t have empty seats on board, but it effectively swaps high fare late market fares for cheap early market fares. This is also great news as customers who are willing to pay for high fares in the late market are often also willing to spend more on ancillary.
3. Harnessing breakage: the Fairlyne approach involves providing vouchers to no-show customers on flights where they have been able to resell their tickets. Although the data largely varies by airline, significant breakage occur as customers simply let their vouchers expire.

In conclusion, Fairlyne’s innovative Resale process stands out as a powerful tool that can significantly boost ancillary revenue. By leveraging Fairlyne’s capabilities, airlines can tap into the untapped potential of no-shows and convert them into incremental flight and ancillary purchases. This presents an unique opportunity for airlines to maximize their revenue streams and further enhance the customer experience. 

In this ever-evolving industry, embracing solutions like Fairlyne will position airlines for long-term success.

The post Running out of ancillary ideas? Fairlyne has the answer for you appeared first on Fairlyne.

Exploring the downsides of overbooking

Firstly, let’s address the elephant in the room – denied boardings. When airlines overbook, they sell more tickets than the actual number of seats available on the flight, with the expectation that not all passengers will show up. However, this also means that if every passenger does show up, some passengers will be denied boarding. This creates a disastrous experience for the passenger, which often leads to dissatisfaction, anger, and bad publicity for the airline. In today’s world, where everybody has a camera on their phone and social media is omnipresent, one bad experience can quickly spiral out of control and damage the reputation of the airline.

Tensions with the operations’ teams

But overbooking also creates tension between the revenue management teams, and airline operations. The RM team is focused on maximizing revenue by selling more tickets than there are seats, while the operations team must ensure seamless aircraft turnarounds and an equally seamless customer experience. When a flight is overbooked, the operations team is left to deal with the fallout of denied boardings, unhappy customers, and negative publicity.

Social media drama

Overbooking also creates a risk for airlines in terms of losing customers. One denied boarding passenger can ruin the whole flight experience, creating drama and bad social media exposure. The passenger will tell their friends, word of mouth is likely to spread out, and future potential customers will avoid the airline and turn to competition. There are countless videos online of dramas with passengers being denied boarding, which only serves to reinforce this negative perception.
In fact, overbooking’s associated risks prevent airlines from fully optimizing their flights. A riskless alternative now exists.

Why Fairlyne makes things better for your airline.

Fairlyne offers a better solution both from a revenue optimization standpoint and a customer satisfaction standpoint. With Fairlyne, airlines give passengers the option to request a partial refund of their ticket if they plan on being a no-show for whatever reason. Subsequently, if the airline manages to resell the passenger’s ticket, they then provide the customer with a partial refund, either in cash, credit, or even special loyalty points.

The airline can choose to resell the ticket(s) once they have sold all their remaining inventory or can opt to resell the ticket immediately if they see that they are well ahead of their planned booking curve and can get a fare premium.

Fairlyne’s is not only a more customer-centric approach, but it is also the only way to be sure that the incremental sold ticket will not force a denied boarding.

One might argue that if you overbook a flight, you don’t need to give any compensation to passengers. However, the issue with overbooking is that you imply don’t know how many passengers will no-show. As a result, revenue managers usually limit their overbooking levels despite the algorithm recommendations, thus compromising on the revenue upside.

With Fairlyne, win both in the short and long term

Finally, Fairlyne is a better solution for the long-term. While overbooking may help airlines in the short term, long term it is eroding airlines’ brand and future profitability. Fairlyne, on the other hand, offers a more sustainable approach to dealing with no-shows. By reselling no-shows, airlines can generate incremental revenue while creating a positive experience for their customers.

The post There’s a better way to do it: Fairlyne vs Overbooking appeared first on Fairlyne.

Non-flexible reservations are useful to secure revenue but come with specific disadvantages.

Let’s take the example of an airline company. For a Paris-New-York flight, you can either book a flexible ticket for $900 or choose a non-flexible one for $800.
If the company succeeds in its overall forecast for that flight, it maximizes its revenue. However, if the demand for this flight turns out to be higher than expected, granting a discount for low-flex bookings is then an error, retrospectively.

The same applies to hotels, railway, ferries, etc.

But profitability is not the only problem. If a customer with a non-flex ticket cannot travel anymore, he does not have any incentive to notify the company. The result is simple: no-show.
Now let’s say that the same customer is willing to get compensation. He will call the company’s customer service multiple times and do its best to convince the agent.
If the company agrees to give him compensation, some money will be lost as the customer will be granted flexible benefits for free. If the company does not accept, its relationship with the customer will be negatively impacted.
To sum it up: non-flexible reservations could limit both profitability and customer satisfaction, but travel companies do not have any alternative now.

3 reasons why the resale business model is beneficial for the travel industry

Let’s make it clear. A resale scheme can finally offer a viable solution to the various disadvantages of non-flexible reservations.
Not only it can, but it does. This is exactly what Ouigo is doing with remarkable success, using Fairlyne’s platform….

The post The Resale Revolution is the Future of Travel appeared first on Fairlyne.

Re-commerce is currently booming in the retail industry and customers are willing to find the same experience in travel and all bookable services.

Fairlyne brings the missing technology brick so that brands can boost customer satisfaction and drive net-new revenue by giving non-refundable tickets a second life.

Our strategic goals for 2023 is to deploy our technology in railway, airline and hospitality industries.  

Lessons learned since founding

We’ve been really surprised by the numbers of customers that want to resell their reservations! We knew it was important, but not at this level.  

In talking with travel brands, we’ve also been surprised by the numbers of them that started internal discussions about re-commerce. They’ve all told us the same thing: “We know we have to do it, but we don’t know exactly how.” That’s when we decided to create Fairlyne.  

The post Hot 25 travel startups for 2023: Fairlyne appeared first on Fairlyne.

Tout se passe par une interface, la transaction est automatisée et en temps réel. Sans investir dans un système informatique, les entreprises peuvent ainsi décider des conditions de cession de tickets et de réservations, maîtriser les canaux de revente et améliorer considérablement leur rentabilité. Fairlyne se rémunère sur le partage des revenus.

Discover our Case Study on OUIGO

Download your detailed case stydy down here.

Download ressources

« Notre objectif est triple : à l’acheteur d’obtenir une place alors que l’entreprise affiche complet ; au détenteur de billet non-flexible de revendre son billet directement sur le site de la marque ; à l’opérateur de générer un revenu additionnel en revendant le billet à un prix potentiellement plus élevé », explique Gilles de Richemond, CEO de Fairlyne, associé dans l’aventure à Michael d’Eboli (CPTO) et Morgan Guérin (CCO), tous rencontrés au sein du groupe Accor.

Car l’opérateur n’a aucune obligation de revendre le billet au prix originel. Au contraire. Un client qui voudra acheter un billet disponible à la revente devra s’acquitter du tarif en vigueur au moment T. Autrement dit, en période de forte affluence, avec la pratique courante du yield management, attendez-vous à payer au prix fort. En contrepartie, vous pourrez monter à bord de cet avion indispensable ou assister à ce match de Ligue des Champions de votre club favori, avec un ticket acheté sur la billetterie officielle. « C’est aussi une manière de repenser la relation avec le consommateur. Il y a moins de déception et plus de satisfaction », ajoute le dirigeant.

Ouigo est le premier client à collaborer avec Fairlyne via OuigoSwap, un service de revente de billets pour ses trains complets, disponible sur son application et son site internet. En quatre mois, plusieurs milliers de transactions ont été effectuées assure la start-up, sans donner de chiffres précis. La compagnie, filiale de la SNCF, estime que 10 % de ses voyageurs – soit environ 120 personnes par train – ne se présentent pas en gare, sans annuler leur billet. De fait, les rames Ouigo partent tous les jours avec des sièges vides alors d’autres clients auraient bien aimé les occuper. Un client Ouigo qui décide de libérer sa place touchera 80 % du montant du billet s’il est cédé, sous forme de bon d’achat.

Après avoir levé 860.000 euros en pré-amorçage, Fairlyne (8 salariés) cherche des fonds pour développer le produit et signer de nouveaux contrats.

The post Fairlyne, la startup derrière la revente de vos billets de train Ouigo appeared first on Fairlyne.

Ainsi, le voyageur souhaitant réserver un billet sur un train complet aura la possibilité de s’inscrire sur la liste en renseignant ses coordonnées. Le client qui lui a un billet, mais renonce à son voyage, pourra maintenant le revendre via son espace personnel. Le premier client inscrit sur la liste d’attente pourra alors le racheter à plein tarif. Et pour celui qui vend, cela lui permettra de récupérer 80% du prix de son billet.

« Cet été, on a une forte demande, et donc tous nos TGV vont circuler. ( ) Cette liste d’attente vient donner quelques places de plus, et notamment ces places que les gens ne restituaient pas », explique à TF1 Stéphane Rapebach, directeur général de Ouigo.

Un dispositif donnant donnant, mais sera-t-il efficace pour répondre à la demande cet été ? Non selon Noémie Bercoff, directrice générale adjointe Conseil et mobilités d’Egis : « L’offre ne suffira pas dans la mesure où la demande est bien plus forte pour deux raisons : l’augmentation du prix des carburants et le Covid, qui fait que les Français prennent leurs vacances dans l’Hexagone. »

Cet été, la compagnie ferroviaire table en effet sur un record historique de réservations : plus de six millions de billets ont déjà été vendus pour juillet-août. C’est 50% de plus que l’année dernière.

The post Trains Ouigo : comment fonctionne le système de liste d’attente ? appeared first on Fairlyne.