Gategroup has teamed up with predictive analytics company Black Swan and Panasonic Avionics to develop a retail platform that will use passenger data to predict the types of food most likely to be ordered on different flights, allowing the right products to be loaded onto aircraft and reducing the amount of food waste.
The three-way alliance aims to “transform aircraft into retail shops in the sky” by using a combination of transactional knowledge, customer understanding and prediction to provide airline passengers with tailored shopping choices for pre-, post- and in-flight dining, entertainment and travel experiences, Gategoup says.
“In the last year we’ve been looking for a partner to develop a whole new retail platform," John Moriarty, chief retail officer at Gategroup tells Flight Daily News. "The idea is that everyone can transact as they do at home, but on board. We came across Black Swan, met [chief executive] Steve King and hit it off and came up with the idea to build a new digital retail platform.”
By marrying past transactional data with demographics and information picked up on social media, the idea is that a picture will emerge of the types of people on a given flight, and what kind of products they are most likely to purchase.
“The more information you get, the better the prediction model gets and you can predict down to a more fine-tuned assortment for those passengers. By flight, airline and route, we will know what people are going to buy,” says Moriarty.
The platform is being trialled by “a couple” of Gategroup’s existing airline partners, but it was formally launched at WTCE. The full platform will be rolled out between autumn and the first half of 2019.
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Source: Flight Daily News
