Lessons from a cafe in Argentina
In my keynote speeches, I like to share the example of a cafe in Argentina that was in a dilemma about whether to charge for wifi or not. They had the option of charging for wifi, giving it free for a while then charging for it or not charging Instead of going down the conventional route, they did something different.

The cafe finally did something that’s called “flip-thinking”, in which they now give you free-flow coffee, and you pay by the hour for being in the cafe and using their “free wi-fi” and power outlets.

There are lessons here to be learnt for airlines from Urban Station, I’d highly encourage you to check them out next time you’re in Buenos Aires.

The challenge of making revenues from in-flight wifi
The recent IPO filing by in-flight wifi provider shows an abysmal usage rate of less than 5%. That means out of 100 passengers on a flight who have access to wifi, only 5 pay to log on. Typically, wifi costs $12.95 for a 24 hour period on Gogo.

At this adoption rate, despite the growth, …

It’s now a well known fact that social media is revolutionizing travel distribution, as we shared in our recent Top 10 Case Study pack. While Delta Air Lines was the first to introduce booking on Facebook almost two years ago, it was Malaysian Airline’s  MHBuddy initiative which went a step further and allowed passengers to sit next to their Facebook friends (or avoid them!).

In late 2012, Alaska Airlines’ FlyingSocial became the first to allow you to click on a map with your friends’ profile pics on it and click on them to book a ticket to their city, as I’ve shared in a number of my keynote presentations.
Germanwings’ FriendsFlight app
Now, with the help of our friends over at SparkLoft Media, Germanwings has introduced an app that allows you to book ticket based on your friends location in Facebook, through an app called FriendsFlight. The application, which lives on Facebook, sorts Germanwings airfare results by price, geographical distance or Facebook friends.

Integrating the social graph in booking
This app is part of a trend where airlines are socializing the booking process. It started with something simple …

The past year has been an interesting and very successful one for Simpliflying with a number of new client acquisitions and tons of exciting free resources such as infographics and Top 10 case-packs posted regularly to the blog amongst other things. At the brink of the new year, we relive ten of the most popular articles on SimpliFlying in 2011:

10. Social seating: Have you read about the Malaysian Airline initiative that led the airline to create a much talked about Facebook booking engine that allowed people to sit with their friends on the airline’s flights?

9. Airports in social media: In the ninth place we have a Top 10 case-pack, an initiative helmed by our Senior Innovation Officer Shubhodeep Pal, on how airports have driven engagement trough social media.

8. Blockbuster social initiative: Next, in 8th place we find one, if not the, most successful social media campaigns of 2011, the AA Advantage “mystery miles” campaign that hit the headlines in February by achieving an 84 fold growth of its Facebook fans in 54 hours.

7. Airline Twitter initiatives: In the seventh place we find …

What a year it has been for the airline industry when it comes to marketing. With healthier profits this year, we’ve seen many airlines push the envelop when it comes to marketing and social media innovation. So to sum up the year, we’re sharing the top 11 marketing innovations by airlines in 2011.

While going through these, you’ll also realize that most of those that made the list aren’t one-off campaigns, but mature strategies made up of tactics that drive very specific business goals. So gone are the days of fluffy, one-off social-media campaigns with questionable ROI. Hope these inspire you for 2012!

Estonian Air social loyalty program: AirScore, the airline’s groundbreaking, yet simple, loyalty program rewards travelers for online advocacy. You earn virtual points on Facebook for sharing a trip report or booking through the airline’s Facebook app. And these can be redeemed for simple privileges like fast-security lane access. In 10 days, the program generated over a million impressions on Facebook, more than the number of passengers carried by the airline in a year! It’s now won three global awards in three months. Read more… (airlinetrends.com)
SpiceJet Bombardier …

I had the opportunity to deliver a presentation and a MasterClass at the ACI Airport Exchange in Abu Dhabi, on the road ahead for social media for airports around the world.

While I focused on key business goals like driving customer service and non-aeronautical revenue, I shared case studies from this year’s SimpliFlying Award winner London Gatwick and nominee Changi, among others. During the half-day MasterClass, I shared in-depth case studies and gave the participants a feel of how using free tools like socialmention.com and Geochirp.com can make their job easy when trying to engage customers.

I share with you here my Prezi presentation from the conference. A video recording will be posted up soon as well. Would love your comments on this.
 

ACI on Prezi

We’ve partnered with our good friends at Eyefortravel to bring you another interesting infographic that reveals a lot about how social media is significantly impacting the travel industry. (Thanks to eezeerdatalab for additional data.) While we’ll leave you to pore over the infographic to get the  juicier details, there are a few interesting insights that do stand out and deserve to be highlighted.

Travel marketers surveyed revealed that using social media reduced PR costs by at least 24%.
Most companies in the travel industry are spending over 25% of their marketing budget on social media.
61% of companies surveyed will spend more money on social media efforts over the next quarter.
Interestingly, social media is being seen as a viable way to drive customer loyalty given that almost 82% of frequent flyers use Facebook and place the most importance on great customer service. (Check out our previous infographic on how the future of loyalty programs will be powered by social media.)
Airlines are increasingly taking to performing customer service on social media as almost 86% of tweets to airlines are about customer service issues.
There’s an increasing investment in social media platforms to engage customers. About 191 airlines now have Twitter accounts …

Yes, you read that correctly. I did not write Web 2.0. Of course, that’s not because it’s not relevant – it’s terribly relevant – but because this newer term encompasses Web 2.0 and then some. So what exactly do I mean by Mobile 2.0 and why is it important? Cutting to the chase, here are some things we all know: first, ordinary feature phones are dying a fast death and smartphone shipments are rising as iOS and Android become increasingly popular with others, such as Windows Phone 7, hot in pursuit. Second, people are increasingly using their phones to do tasks they earlier used their laptops or desktops for: hotel search, ticket bookings, banking, emails, etc. Third, smartphones are creating an all new category of the always connected traveler – a web-savvy, social-networking geek who isn’t afraid to declare to his virtual networks what he’s thinking or doing.
The future is mobile
Given the rapidly changing interactional/behavioural habits of the traveler, it has become important for airlines to target them where they can be found. Close your eyes and think for a moment about what the word mobile phone means to you: I’m quite certain that most of the readers here …

I had the opportunity to deliver the opening keynote at this year’s Navitaire Customer Summit, which is an annual gathering of the world’s leading budget airlines commercial and IT executives. And I spoke about how airlines and airports can drive results and ROI from social media – sharing tons of examples of airlines from around the world actually doing that. I also delivered a MasterClass at the Summit.

And as with all my presentations, I’m posting the presentation here for your viewing pleasure. Feedback welcome, and if you’d like to engage us to help you with your social media strategy or speak at your event – just drop us a note.
 …

If you still need proof of whether social media matters or not, you only have to look at the turnout for this year’s votes for the 2nd SimpliFlying Awards for Social Media Excellence. By the time voting closed after 2 weeks of stiff competition, more than 30,000 votes had been submitted from over 4500 cities. And this was after having shortlisted the Top Nominees from close to 60 nominations. The finalists for each category have been announced and they’ll face off in Amsterdam on October 10.

The innovations begin

When airlines initially began their adventure on the socialscape, it was all about about feeling their way about on the social platforms of their choice. The primary focus at the outset was first, discovering how to drive traffic and building a fan-base, followed by the more important aim of utilizing the platform for customer engagement and provide them a real-time medium of information-dissemination and customer service. Slowly, however, they realized that social platforms could also aid them in driving revenue. Flash sales, deals and contests became popular to attract more customers. However, the real innovations were still some time away.

A changing landscape

That time, it seems, has …

Yesterday, we posted a case-pack on the Best Airlines in Social Media. Today, completing our roundup of the top nominees in the airlines/airports category of this year’s SimpliFlying Awards for Social Media Excellence, we’re bringing you the Top 5 Airports in Social Media as nominated for the awards.
We’ve already recounted how the response to these awards has been huge and humbling at the same time: over 30,000 votes from 4500+ cities is a good enough reason to make our hearts swell with pride.
But today is special: it’s the last day of voting so if you haven’t yet voted for your favourite airline or airport, now’s the time to make amends. Voting closes at 5 pm PDT today.
You can also go through our other case-packs on the Best Airlines Driving Revenue and the Best Airlines Driving Customer Engagement and Crisis Management.
Meanwhile, you can check out the latest standings and vote for this particular category below:

Best Airport in Social Media
Before we jump into the case-pack, here are a few takeaways from these categories:

Airports are keen to ensure that passengers who travel through them …