“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent—it is the one most adaptable to change.”
– Charles Darwin
The Covid-19 pandemic quickly brought the travel and aviation industries to a standstill. Global lockdowns and travel restrictions caused extraordinary drops in demand and airlines had to vigorously adjust strategies to cope with these unusual times. That part is clear for us at Aviator.
The uncertain part is, as the industry is slowly recovering, how will airlines confront the challenge of forecasting demand and optimising inventory when the historical reference points are meaningless and market’s elasticities have completely changed? The question begs – seeing that Airline Revenue Management has to start from a blank slate, is there still a future for it?
The answer is a resounding YES!. This blank slate is allowing airlines to revamp their current Revenue Management strategies and focus on realigning their Revenue Management systems.
Aviator is giving airlines all the necessary tools for such a successful Airline Revenue Management recovery process.
1. Fine-tune the Revenue Management System.
Aviator provides the analyst with the ability to select any historical date range to create forecasts for any future date together with many tools to even manually influence that forecast too. Aviator also allows the analyst to manually influence the Optimisation process by setting various business rules. Performing a series of “What-ifs”, allows the analysts to proactively focus on validating the results and take corrective actions where needed.
2. Forecast unpredictable demand
Future demand is uncertain hence the need for very frequent forecasts. Not only is Aviator producing computer-generated forecasts but it’s re-forecasting every day to ensure automatic adjustment to changing market conditions.
3. Quickly adapt to changing price elasticities
The market’s various elasticities have undoubtedly changed and with that the requirement of analysts to manually influence that. Aviator allows the analyst to alter any route’s historical elasticities and through a series of “what-if” scenarios can fine-tune each market to match current market elasticities.
4. Measure and Manage your results
Analysts are going to implement various manual overrides to influence both the forecasting and optimisation processes. Measuring the success of these manual interventions are going to be crucial. Aviator allows the analyst to build custom reports and keep a close eye on any spillage or spoilage on any route to enable them to take corrective actions.
The future of Airline Revenue Management is bright and predicted to play an even bigger role as airlines are recovering. The one big change is that the Revenue Management analysts’ roles will be more hands-on in future. Adapting to this change is crucial for survival and having an Airline Revenue Management system that allows you to change is equally important.
