Dominique Leroux is vice-president of marketing at advanced airfare analytics company, Infare which uses large data sets to help airlines, airports and travel agents optimise their revenue management
What sparked your interest in aviation?
My career in the travel industry started 19 years ago, when I was hired by a leading travel technology provider, Amadeus, for a short-term mission in the sales consultancy team of their French Riviera office. From there I progressed to various marketing management positions in the Spanish capital where I started witnessing incredible innovations in the aviation industry – directly benefiting everyday travellers who aren’t even aware who the pacesetters are behind the scenes. I was immediately hooked.
How has your career progressed?
After Amadeus, I was looking for a new challenge, something that would force me to think differently. I joined Sabre in London to build the field marketing function in Europe, Middle East and Africa and then moved to run the Asia-Pacific marketing team from Singapore. I became vice-president of marketing at Infare last January and moved to Berlin. I guess I have the travel bug in many ways.
Infare
What are your career highlights?
I turned 40 earlier this year and celebrated my 15-year anniversary as an expatriate living outside of France. Talking with friends, family and colleagues, catching up on good times and introducing myself at Infare, I realised I follow a pattern: I like building things from scratch. Don’t get me wrong, I am not talking about building furniture from flatpacks (even though I must admit I am good at that by now), I am referring to building teams and processes – transforming marketing organisations to bring the best value to businesses. This is precisely why I joined Infare. I get the opportunity to revitalise the marketing function and help propel the company growth, so our customers ultimately increase their revenues. Win, win, win.
What is Infare?
Infare is a leading data and technology partner for the global airline and travel industry. For 19 years, Infare has been delivering airlines, strategic partners and other travel industry players with real-time pricing intelligence converted into meaningful competitive information. Infare data delivers total market and customer insight with the most complete dataset of current and past airfares available. This empowers airlines to identify revenue management and business development opportunities and make smarter pricing decisions.
Infare’s knowledge and experience are unmatched in the industry. The company is relied on by the world’s top travel businesses and our competitive airfare data is recognised as the most comprehensive, rigorously vetted and trusted source in the world. We currently work with more than 240 airlines, 20 airports and a number of large online travel agencies.
Describe your role and responsibilities?
As vice president of marketing, I am responsible for the company’s global marketing strategy and all internal and external communications. In a nutshell, my role is to position Infare at the forefront of industry innovation, articulate our value proposition of bringing advanced solutions to the marketplace, and ultimately support our sales team in bringing the best value to our customers.
How is your data and analytics helping the airline and travel industry? How is this business evolving?
Running an airline nowadays is tougher than ever. Aside from all operational challenges, airlines have to ensure that they maintain and improve yields to achieve profitability and long-term financial sustainability. Airlines and other travel industry players simply cannot compete effectively without sophisticated pricing intelligence data and information to drive strategic decision making. That need is set to grow exponentially as global passenger numbers increase and airlines offer their customers ever-richer and more complex products and services.
What are your challenges?
With the ever-increasing distribution channels, fierce competition and the complexity brought by ancillaries and the need for personalisation, airlines must behave more like e-commerce players and dynamically price their fares. Consumers are savvier than ever and expect the same level of choice and personalisation from airlines as they can get today with companies like Amazon or Spotify – which both personalise content recommendations based on previous usage, time of day or imagery. Pricing intelligence will become the holy grail for airlines. At Infare, we need to continue to innovate to bring the best value to our customers. We are constantly developing our offering to meet the growing need for pricing intelligence. We are also intensifying our customer focus to anticipate the evolving needs of our customers, and expanding our team with experienced travel industry professionals.
I feel that what we do at Infare today is more important than it’s ever been.
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