[Presentation] Supercharging Aviation Marketing in The Age of the Connected Traveller (with a special focus on the Middle East)

Earlier today, I delivered a keynote at the Arab Aviation and Media Summit 2013, held in the beautiful country of Salalah, Oman. My presentation focused, primarily, on three aspects: the rise of the connected traveller, three of the most important trends in aviation marketing, and three opportunities for brands to leverage the habits and behaviour of today’s connected travellers in order to drive results. The presentation includes relevant statistics on traveller behaviour in the Middle East and compares them with global trends in order to further sketch out missed opportunities and room for expansion.

Here’s a brief summary of the main points I touched upon, followed by a copy of the presentation I delivered: 

Connected Travellers, Disconnected Brands

First of all, and most importantly, I touched upon the need to shift the focus from a platform-based approach in marketing to the rise of the Connected Traveller: a person constantly tuned into the internet and social networks, via his/her smart mobile devices. This has major implications for aviation. For instance, the travel lifecycle has evolved from a 3-step vanilla process to a much more sophisticated 5-step process. Moreover, this has led to a paradigm shift in how travellers communicate, make travel decisions and in their purchase behaviours as well.

Evolving Trends in Aviation Marketing

Recently, we unveiled two State of the Industry Reports: one touched upon the latest trends in Airline Marketing, the other illustrated the most innovative trends in Airport Marketing. Of the 15 trends covered across these two reports, I focused on three of the most important for airlines and airports: social care, location-based initiatives and virtual shopping, which, more or less, underline the tremendous shift in how the industry is looking at the next age of marketing: by improving passenger experience through new technologies and by pre-empting purchase behaviours.

Three Opportunities

For any aviation brand — airline or airport — looking to get a head-start in the new marketing age, there are tremendous opportunities. But all start with a basic understanding of how different the Connected Traveller is from the traveller of yore. It all begins by understanding the tremendous multiplier effect of social networks and how social advocacy can, literally, make brands. Further, delving deeper into how customers (or potential customers behave), we see how, in the Middle East, people enthusiastically use the internet and social networks, but only about 40% of travellers buy tickets online. This needs to change. Lastly, good mobile experiences are not just a good-to-have but are increasingly important — poor mobile experiences are hurting sales in the region. 

That said, please enjoy the presentation, which takes a detailed look at many statistics and interesting case-studies from across the world.