Air France and KLM’s move to develop a social networking website for air travellers, called bluenity.com, marks a further sign of airlines’ awareness of the potential from new media opportunities.
The initiative, which launched on 7 November, aims to provide the airlines’ travellers with the opportunity to share travel tips, provide advice and contact and meet other travellers throughout the journey.
Air France-KLM head of e-commerce Martin van der Zee says: “A growing number of people solely rely on the experience of others for all sorts of information. Bluenity.com offers all travellers an online and interactive platform to enrich their travel experience and that of others.”
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The subject of how airlines could address the new channel of increasingly prominent social networking websites was a major theme during the latest Amadeus e-Commerce conference, held in Cannes last month.
“Social computing. This is how we are communicating with each other,” Forrester Research vice-president and principal analyst Henry Harteveldt told delegates. He notes that 41% of US online leisure passengers use travel-related social computing at least monthly and points to over 500 travel applications already on the Facebook site.
“We see a growing role of this social computing network. Social computing sites are the new search engines. Now we have a new challenge, we have to take advantage of social computing,” he says. “You have to understand who your passengers are and your social networking strategy may vary from market to market. Only when you understand the people, the objective and the strategy, should you think of the technology.”
That is a view concurred with by vice-president distribution at Canadian budget carrier WestJet, Catherine Dyer. “Our guests are really choosing how they want to communicate with us,” she says, noting the carrier is spending time trying to understand how its passengers are using social media.
“This is not going to be commercial play with an RoI,” she suggests. “But it gives the ability to strengthen our brand.”
Finnair’s e-com & CRM development director Timir Bhose points to the opportunity to be experimental. “You can’t predict exactly the end result,” he notes. “With the Internet it is easier to try things. It is really important you try different things and beflexible, try different partners, changing the channel.
“If all your customers spend time there, and you want to increase awareness of the brand, that is where you need to be."
See the Airline Business blog for more on airlines and social networking sites
Source: Airline Business
