Let’s Reduce Paper Usage in Boarding Passes: Choose KLM and Receive Your Boarding Pass Right To your Facebook Messenger!

KLM has started to utilize messaging apps to simplify customers’ airline journey. As mentioned before in one of our articles, KLM began to offer their passengers the availability to rebook their cancelled flight through WhatsApp at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. This time, they are working with Facebook Messenger! It is a known fact that currently, airline passengers are increasingly using QR code boarding passes on their phones to pass boarding gates. Alongside the rising awareness of environmental concerns and increasing widespread knowledge and use of smartphone technology, paper use in airlines can be reduced.

How it works:

When the passenger books their airline ticket via the KLM website, they must check a box to receive messages through Facebook Messenger. Consequently, KLM will send a booking confirmation. When the flight date comes closer, a check in update will be sent for the passenger to access their boarding passes in the chat thread. This QR code boarding pass with all the flight information will then be used by the passenger to pass through security and the boarding gate. It will decrease passengers’ stress of thinking about accessing their information through their email and downloading their boarding passes onto their mobile phones or rather, printing. This ease of use also arrives with the availability of communicating with KLM customer service staff right from the chat thread. Passengers’ questions will be answered 24/7 in 13 different languages which are: Dutch, English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, Norwegian, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Thai.

In an interview by Conde NastTraveler with KLM’s Senior Vice President for Digital, Tjalling Smit, he mentions that airlines can have a more efficient contact with their customers through the apps that they use on a daily basis rather than pushing them to download the airline’s app. This increases their exposure.

As mentioned earlier in one of our previous blog posts, a transactional relationship between brands and customers through messaging applications may not be ready to evolve just yet. However, they can definitely be used for information purposes and increasing the ease of communication between the company and its customer. It seems like we will definitely see KLM taking the front in this trend with other social media programs.

By Gizem Tüdes and Tomasz Wawrzeniec

References:

http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/30/11331168/klm-facebook-messenger-boarding-pass-chat-integration

https://messenger.klm.com/

http://www.cntraveler.com/stories/2016-04-01/you-can-now-get-your-boarding-pass-on-facebook-messenger

WhatsApp: More Than Just A Conversation Tool

We, the infamous Y generation, love to use messaging applications on our mobile phones to communicate with our friends and family. Even if we saw our friend only 30 minutes earlier, we feel the need to share our information (feelings, thoughts, questions, videos, photos and many more) in real time. As one of the most popular messaging applications in the world (with a user base of up to 1 billion as of February 2016), Whatsapp is starting to be used by the tourism industry to be in contact with customers. 

Skift’s regular information and reasoning on new startups in the travel industry include a particularly recent Spanish based search engine in the name of CorreyVuela. This service offers potential travellers the opportunity to book flights using WhatsApp. How, you ask?

© CorreyVuela

1. The WhatsApp user must add CorreyVuela’s number

2. Tell them where and when you want to go. Example: “Nice – London. 15 March to 18 March for 1 person return.”

3. CorreyVuela searches for the ideal flight from over 30 search engines and offers the best option with flight details and price as well as a link where the customer can pay safely.

If you don’t want to spend hours researching flights and having to make decision after decision for your travels, this new service will enable you to save time only with a few messages, save money due to economic prices and it’s all stress-free! However…if you say that such a service is too early to be trusted, then let’s see how else WhatsApp can help in enriching customer service in travel. 

Another new service has been initiated by the airline KLM offering passengers to rebook their cancelled flight through WhatsApp at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol.  If your flight has been cancelled, you must walk down to the Transfer Centre 6 in the airport where you can find a WhatsApp number. Now, all you have to do to be rebooked on the next available flight is to send your name and booking code. Then a self-service check in machine will give you your boarding pass! Less time queuing & barely any arguments with the staff!

Skift mentions this type of real time opportunity interaction between businesses and customers through messaging channels as “The Post-App Economy”. It is identified with easy engagement, multi-channels where customers utilize more than 1 type of messaging application and high signals where a new message on these apps grasps immediate attention. Even though this new trend deserves to be recognized with more than 2 examples, particularly with the ever increasing usage of WhatsApp, there needs to be a discussion on the level of trust customers may have for initiating transactions through these applications. 

WhatsApp may be great for customer service, content and media sharing but are we really ready to buy flight tickets or book hotel rooms with only a message sent through WhatsApp? In our opinion, it is not ready to pass to a level of mass use for such transactions. Data protection risks provide an unreliable image of the application in being used for commercial purposes.

If you happen to go to the ITB in Berlin this year and you are interested to learn more about the ways WhatsApp can be used in the tourism industry, do not miss a talk by the Consultant and Managing Director of Tourismuszukunft, Michael Faber on March 9 between 14:30 - 15:00 in Hall 6.1!

By Gizem Tudes and Tomasz Wawrzeniec

References:

• https://skift.com/2016/02/22/5-new-travel-startups-building-new-platforms-to-solve-old-problems/#1
• http://www.klm.com/travel/it_en/about/news_press/travel_news/Use_Whatsapp_to_rebook_your_cancelled_flight.htm
• http://skift.com/2016/01/11/how-the-post-app-economy-is-changing-the-way-travel-brands-engage-with-customers/
• https://mdk.io/whatsapp-and-business-a-new-love-story/

A NEW BORN in the collaborative tourism industry: the KLM Must See Map.

A new trend in the tourism sector has emerged for these last years named the collaborative tourism. This new form is more focused on the social aspect than other aspects, which means travellers are more able to share their experiences and knowledge thanks to new specialized websites such as Tripnco  and Aventuro. These both websites are platforms for travellers for which in one hand want to find other partners to organize a common travel and in the other hand for traveller who desire to participate in a travel already prepared either by the members or by other travellers registered in these websites. Aventuro is more specialized in the adventure tourism than Tripcno but both of them have the same purpose toward their customers. And as we can see, consumers are on the centre of the process of decision-making. That is what we call prosumers.

Therefore, advantages are numerous both for travellers and travel agencies.

Firstly, for travellers, there is a better share of their experiences and interests with people who want to have information about a destination or desire to have information about a specific region or country due to a lack of information. Then, it is easier to constitute a group with people sharing similar interests. Another significant advantage is the cost sharing which allow “collaborative economies” for travellers. As regards the advantages for travel agencies, we can notice that they can target the expectations and needs of their customers easier and faster. As a consequence, they could observe the real trends that are related to their customers. They make their customer in the same time more loyal. The collaborative tourism will certainly modify the tourism sector in a near future because travellers are still looking for better expertise and service. That is why the tourism sector has to adapt rapidly to these new trends if they want to be competitive.

Being competitive creating new services, this is one of the objective and a success of KLM with the project of the Must see map. This is a great example of the collaborative tourism since using the Must see map, travellers can prepare their new stay with the recommendation of their friends from different social network on the places to go, to eat, etc…

Once, the friends end their say, KLM print and send the complete map with all the advices included on the map to the user for free.

To know more about the KLM's Must see map, watch the video. 

Sources:

- http://www.aventureo.com/
- http://www.etourisme-outgoing.fr/tourisme-communautaire-et-collaboratif/
- http://www.tripnco.com/fr/
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dosrsAy4ENY