Airlines are strapped down with massive IT systems that don’t always allow them to be flexible enough to offer a more customer-centric experience while booking travel.
Travelaer, a software company located in the same complex in Nice, France, as travel technology giant Amadeus, thinks it has a solution.
Mike Slone, chief experience officer of Travelaer, came up with the idea for the company after previously working at Amadeus and Razorfish, a digital marketing agency in Austin, Texas.
“At Razorfish, one of my biggest clients was Southwest Airlines, where I worked on projects that included its digital strategy, its new website, and Early Bird check-in,” he said.
Most recently, Slone spent a couple of years at Amadeus as global lead, user experience. But in 2013 he began Travelaer to delve more deeply into overall customer experience.
“Our original idea was to help enable an airline's customer experience, in particular their digital experience, by creating a technology platform,” he said.
Most airline technology is set up in silos, said Slone. “So they have platforms that they utilize for all of their major IT, but on top of that, they have different groups that manage the process,” he said. “The issue was that we could never really do what we wanted to on the customer experience side without getting deep into the technology layer.”
“I knew these services were needed. Airlines would come to me and say, `Mike, we love your strategy. We love all the work that you're doing for us. But you don't understand that we'll never be able to get this developed,’” Slone recalled. “The travel industry is old school and it's hampered by archaic technology platforms that make it very difficult to create a great customer experience.”
There's no one company that has figured out all the pieces of what it takes to help airlines put the best customer experience together. But that doesn't deter Slone.
“We empower what we call the best-of-breed approach, which means we don't have to build all of the software ourselves to help an airline,” he said. “We build a middle platform that allows us to take content, data, and pricing or software from other partners and integrate it, but customers view it as a cohesive experience.”
In February, Icelandair launched a new engine that integrates stopover bookings for passengers on its website, built by Travelaer.
Another airline client is Azores AirlinesSata Air, based in Portugal’s Azores Islands.
(Correction: Fixed the name of the airline. Sorry for the error.)
Said Slone:
“We worked with Azores to design and develop a new experience that would display pricing similar to what easyJet and Ryanair have. This is something that they couldn't do in their previous environment."
"A key part was that the user interface is multi-screen, so anytime we build something, it works on the web, on mobile, on a tablet or any screen.”
As noted, Travelaer is in the same tech complex as Amadeus. “It was a good placement for us to be close to Amadeus so when another customer came to visit them, they could also visit us."
“We didn't originally intend to work directly with Amadeus, but after it started to see some of the user experience work we've done,” said Slone. “That, coupled with relationships that I have built internally with Amadeus over the last two years when I worked there, made it just natural that we began to work together.”
Travelaer’s team of 17 is located in Sophia Antipolis and Frankfurt. Slone said:
“We want to have a team that has a core presence in Sophia Antipolis, but if we find talent elsewhere, we're okay with people working remotely. Frankfurt is a very good example of that.
“We hired several developers who used to work directly on the Lufthansa and Austrian Air booking engines and they have immense experience in the travel industry.”
Since its founding in 2015, Travelaer has raised Euro 1.5 million in funding, and is nearly ready to close on another Euro 1 million.
“Our first investor is a guy name Stephane Lescure,” he said. “Stephane has funded several startup companies, including Sequoiasoft, a big hotel and restaurant software technology platform.” Another investor is Thibault Poutrel, who serves on the board of Ingenico, a payment processing company started by his family.
“We're hopeful to close a few million euros this year, which will help us more rapidly expand our platform,” Slone said. (The company makes its money using a revenue model based on recurring fees paid for using using its technology platforms.)
So far, airlines seem to be liking its attention to their key concerns, which often are for websites that have 100% responsive design, are compliant with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, US DOT guidelines, have hooks to Vayant or Google for pricing, and can tap availability from Amadeus Altéa, the passenger service system.
Travelaer believes that for airlines and other travel companies to be successful they have to offer something to their customers throughout all phases of travel, not just for brief moments in only one or two phases of the customer journey. Slone said:
“We're talking about providing a concierge level of service to their customers through the planning process, booking process, pre-travel process and while they're on their trip."