Looking Back on FTE Dublin 2017

Late last month, Guestlogix sent a team to attend the Future Travel Experience (FTE) show in Dublin. The show brought together an amazing group of thought leaders from across the travel industry and beyond to talk about making customer experiences more enjoyable through innovative solutions.

We had a great time meeting many of you at our booth and around the show and getting the chance to show off our rebrand and talk a bit about what we’ve been up to. We loved being able to unveil our mission to help airlines capture the highest ancillary revenues while delivering an incredible passenger experience and hear what other brands are doing to help the industry move forward.

There were so many great sessions and panels at FTE that aligned with our vision and brought up intriguing ideas for all of us in the industry. Here are a few of those sessions and ideas that piqued our interest:

The future of short-haul: Balancing PaxEx and profit inflight

This second-day panel session brought forth great insight and ideas around what we all strive to achieve: creating a superior on-board passenger experience while also improving our ancillary revenues.

We all know how difficult it can be to try to get our passengers to purchase additional product and services while ensuring that they don’t feel nickel and dimed. This group of travel experts shared their thoughts on the matter and what their companies are doing to balance experience and profit. Presenters included:

• Trevor Martin, Chief Commercial Officer at Iberia Express speaking about streaming content directly to passengers’ portable electronic devices
• Nigel Fanning, Head of Product & Ancillary Revenue at Jetstar Group speaking about how the Jetstar Group will continue to evolve its inflight product, and commercial proposition, to keep pace in the hugely competitive Asia-Pacific market
• Sarah Panthou, Retail and Ancillary Revenues at Air France KLM speaking about how connectivity and employee tablets “rock” our good old inflight shopping experience

Inspiration from those going the extra mile to leverage cutting edge technologies to enhance customer experiences and revenue opportunities across the journey

Technology is a constant element of many of our everyday lives so it only makes sense that airlines would take advantage of the technologies that their passengers are already using to enhance the travel experience.

In this session, we were able to hear about how different technologies like AI, robotics, machine learning, virtual and augmented reality, and more can enhance the passenger experience, not only inflight, but at every stage of their journey. Presenters included:

• Nikunj Shanti, Chief Data & Digital Officer at AirAsia speaking about how AirAsia is working to quickly become a “digital airline” to increase ancillary revenues by over 20%
• Vincent Harrison, Managing Director at Dublin Airport speaking about how big a role technology playing in Dublin Airport’s efforts to innovate and drive collaboration with its stakeholders
• Bart Pannecoeck, Head of Travel Business Development (EMEA) at Salesforce, and Martine Van der Lee, Social Media Development at KLM Royal Dutch Airlines speaking about how airlines can adapt in the “age of the customer” and how central should AI be to those efforts
• Samantha Dickinson, Head of Technology and Innovation - Commercial at Etihad Airways speaking about how Etihad is looking to deliver new travel experiences, and what this means for new technology platforms and a change in culture

These were just two of many other amazing sessions that we loved at FTE. Did you attend FTE this year? If so, let us know what your favorite session was and what you learned!