Air Serbia to undergo digital transformation
Air Serbia has said it plans to digitalise its operations in order to create new and modify existing business processes, culture, and customer experiences, the showpiece of which will be the rollout of its very own booking system. Speaking at the recent Uzakrota Online Travel Technology and Marketing Summit, Air Serbia’s General Manager for Commercial and Strategy, Jiri Marek, said, “We have started to develop our own booking system because all the airline systems are legacy-based so if you want to address the needs of the new modern generations, either you wait for those legacy systems to be ready or you use the opportunity and develop something from scratch and that is what we are currently doing”.
Commenting in more detail on the new reservation system, Mr Marek noted, “One of the first things we did when the pandemic started, and we were forced to ground the fleet, was to fasttrack all the things we were planning as our long-term goals in terms of digital transformation and distribution strategies. Within a few months we launched our first mobile app. Shortly, in December, we will launch a new version of it. Based on that, we also began our new project, using design synching, in order to develop the booking engine. The principle is very easy. You put yourself in the shoes of the customer and you do everything from the user experience point of view. You touch the main pain points, which are usually flight search, document verification and payment and you try to make them as simple as possible because simplification and innovation in this field is fundamental for the user experience which potentially leads to long-term loyalty”.
The airline did not specify when the new system would go live. In 2016, Air Serbia migrated from the Amadeus booking platform to the Sabre passenger reservation system to better align with its stakeholder Etihad Airways and equity partners Air Berlin and Alitalia. The move sent a shockwave through the Serbian travel industry, which largely had only worked on the Amadeus system at the time. Since then, the Etihad equity alliance has, for the most part, collapsed and earlier this year the Emirati carrier announced it would transition to the Amadeus passenger service system, while renewing a contract for a number of Sabre’s IT products.
During the first six months of 2021, 53% of Air Serbia’s total ticket sales were carried out directly by the airline, through its website, mobile application, contact centre and retail shops, up from 32% during the same period in 2019. Online sales channels contributed the most, taking up a 44% share of total sales, doubling compared to the same period in 2019, when it accounted for 21% of sales. Air Serbia’s Head of E-commerce, Srdjan Prokić, recently noted, “In order to offer our passengers the best possible travel experience at all times, we strived to constantly develop our platforms and adapt to the changes in customer habits resulting from the pandemic. We have introduced changes to our website, updated our mobile application regularly and worked on improving the online reservation system, thus creating a comprehensive and functional solution for passengers. We continue to work on new projects, and we are glad to make it easier to search and book flights and enable personalised offers for our users”.
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