Virgin America is planning further upgrades to its 'Red' in-flight entertainment system (IFE) as part of a bid to continue growing its ancillary revenue stream.
The US low-cost carrier this summer introduced a new upgrade to 'Red" which included making SkyMall products available for the first time through the system. Virgin America vice president of marketing Porter Gale says the next step would to be individualise the shopping experience for its passengers using 'Red,' which is installed at every seat across the carrier's Airbus A320 family fleet.
"It's hard to individualise to the guest at the seat," Gale told ATI on the sidelines of today's Amadeus Horizons 2010 conference in San Francisco. "As we further develop our software we think we think we'll be able to better understand our guests."
She says Virgin America implements upgrades to 'Red' twice per year and the next upgrade is expected in early 2011. Porter says Virgin America is still defining the roadmap for this upgrade but it will include new ancillaries. Coordinating 'Red' upgrades are complex, she adds, because it involves multiple suppliers and requires some downtime for each aircraft.
Porter says bag fees are currently Virgin America's largest ancillary revenue generator followed by on board sales. She says the carrier is now looking at expanding its ancillary offering at all the touch-points, including the website, call centre and on board.
In addition to expanding its on board offering through Red, Porter says upgrades are planned to Virgin America's reservation system to facilitate more ancillaries before passengers arrive at the airport. She adds Virgin America has ideas for introducing new ancillaries but "technology does limit us at times".
But she says Virgin America is always careful not to add ancillaries that would lengthen the booking process in order to avoid the potential of passengers "booking away". She says Virgin America similarly strives to avoid adding ancillaries at the airport kiosk because it wants to keep the queues moving.
The potential introduction of a mobile solution could help Virgin America improve the airport experience. Virgin America does not yet offer mobile check-in but Porter says the carrier is now looking at introducing the technology, using bar codes on mobiles to replace paper boarding passes.
"We're doing a full audit of that," Porter told today's conference, referring to using mobile solutions to improve "speed through the airport".
Source: Air Transport Intelligence news
