Digital Travel Credentials for Airlines – Improved Passenger Satisfaction

It makes sense for airlines to improve passenger satisfaction wherever and whenever they can. Because satisfied passengers are the ones who want to fly with you again – and frequent flyers deliver far more to your bottom line than regular passengers. IATA estimates that airlines will make a profit of just US$ 5.45 for every commercial passenger carried globally in 2024[1]. That’s around the price of a premium cup of coffee in London. But frequent flyers deliver margins of US$28-32 per passenger.

Your most frequent flyers, encouraged by the upper tiers of your frequent flyer program, are motivated to fly exclusively with you or your partner airlines. They place great value on your premium seats, dedicated services, luxury lounges and priority treatment.

So it’s obviously in your interest to deliver an excellent passenger experience, and increase your revenue and margins. But you’re in competition with low-cost airlines, and ever-increasing customer choice online. And while your frequent flyer program drives customer engagement and loyalty, it’s also susceptible to fraud and inefficiencies that can undermine its effectiveness.

One challenge is the need to move away from traditional miles-based accruals to a more dynamic approach, based on ticket price. That way you can align rewards with customer spending habits, rather than simply taking into account the distance flown. So you can ensure that your most loyal customers are the ones most appropriately incentivized.

You also need to optimize redemption categories to maximize the value of your frequent flyer program. If you can identify distressed inventory and offer tailored redemption options, you can enhance customer satisfaction and engagement while minimizing revenue leakage.

Key to all of this is having a better grip on who your customers are, and being absolutely confident of their identity, especially online. If you can securely link customers’ airline accounts to their digital identities, then you can be sure who you’re dealing with.

At SITA we provide a premium approach to digital identity, with SITA Digital Travel being tailored specifically for airlines. It’s an innovative solution offering robust identity verification mechanisms, helping you mitigate risks – and safeguarding both your interests and your passengers’.

Our Digital Travel Credentials (DTCs) can help you deliver seamless travel – at the airport, on the flight, and beyond – to include hotels, onward travel and more. By embracing digital identity solutions, you attract more loyal travelers, as well as fortifying partnerships within the travel ecosystem.

SITA Digital Travel helps you address risks, drive innovation, and unlock new revenue streams within your loyalty program.

The secure sharing of identity information is essential in fostering trust, and our decentralized identity solutions deliver unrivaled peace of mind. Passengers’ personal information – including their biometrics – is stored on their mobile devices, not in a central database. So it remains under their control, and is only shared with their consent. And that means you no longer have to hold unnecessary personal information on your servers. This enhances data security, mitigates fraud, and enables seamless collaboration and new opportunities for revenue generation.

At the airport, we help you elevate the passenger experience and customer satisfaction by seamlessly integrating travel authorizations with booking information. By consolidating these processes, you minimize costly and inefficient manual checks and verifications, and free up staff for more valuable tasks.

This integrated approach enhances your operational efficiency and also establishes a single, reliable source of truth, bolstering security and trust right across the passenger journey.

So why not come and talk to us, and find out more – and give your customers a radically-improved passenger experience?

[1] https://www.iata.org/en/pressroom/2023-releases/2023-12-06-01/