At a Time of Turbulence for the Airline Industry, Technology Innovation Offers a Brighter Future for Carriers and their Employees, According to ID90 Travel Employee Study

DALLAS, Feb. 22, 2022 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- ID90 Travel, a global technology leader that is reinventing non-revenue travel for airline employees, released a study on airline employee travel revealing that upgrades to the technology underlying non-rev travel is a key to improving airline employees' job satisfaction, reducing waste and inefficiency, and lifting profitability at the carriers.

The survey of close to 1,500 associates at more than two dozen airlines around the world comes at a time when carriers are wrestling with challenges that include high staff turnover, general labor shortages and an overburdened flight system that has struggled to maintain guest and employee satisfaction in an era of frequent cancellations and flight disruptions.

"The results of the research are clear. In 2022, airline employees don't want to have to call their carriers' reservations centers or use clumsy booking systems to list or book their flights - they want to do this via a mobile app or online, just as consumers do. Improving the underlying technology that powers airline employee digital travel tools is how airlines achieve this," said Henry Harteveldt, President and Travel Industry Analyst at San Francisco, CA-based Atmosphere Research Group, "This can help airlines improve employee job satisfaction and loyalty and also enable carriers to lower their costs at a time of surging fuel prices and uncertain passenger demand."

Why Non-Rev Travel Matters

The number of air transportation job openings and shortage of workers in the U.S. is staggering, and it is profoundly impacting the consumer experience.
Alongside the challenges of an increasingly difficult environment for assisting and managing passengers, the pressure on airlines to retain and incentivize personnel is enormous. And the connection between happy, well-trained airline personnel and the satisfaction of the traveling public is undeniable.

The ID90 Travel report demonstrates that the ability to travel free or at a low cost - "non-rev" travel - is a major incentive for airline employees to pursue careers in air travel, and remain with the carriers for the long-term.

With more than 2.5 million people currently employed by airlines globally, booking millions of non-rev tickets annually, the technology systems that manage the process are critical.

Currently, they are falling short.

Regaining the Innovation Edge

Mike Stacy, CEO of ID90 Travel, said, "The data demonstrates a significant disjunction between the value placed on non-rev travel by millions of airline employee travelers, and the ability of airline carriers to deliver it well. Today, airline employees are forced to use outdated, cumbersome technology and poorly designed websites and apps to book non-rev trips, and cannot easily purchase employee discounted hotels, rental cars and cruises in one place. They also experience long waiting times for travel assistance and are impacted negatively by the lack of automation and difficulty allocating positive-space seats. At a time when airline employees enjoy the delivery of goods and services in other parts of their lives via low-friction providers such as Amazon, Netflix and Uber, the reality that they must book personal travel like we did in the 1990s – sometimes, even less efficiently – is a huge disappointment for them."

He concluded, "It is a big financial problem for airlines, too. The total cost of a non-rev booking can be as high as $15.00, which includes the cost of reservation agent time, the cost of staff travel time required to complete the booking using inefficient technology, and IT costs required to maintain the technology well. More importantly, the impact of old technology on employee morale and satisfaction is tremendous. Newer technology for managing the process is available and it's increasingly being implemented by carriers around the world. It has the potential to produce a complete reinvention of the way airline associates search, book and track non-revenue travel, including substantial cost savings and waste reductions for airlines."

Key findings from the report include:

• Staff travel is one of the most important privileges available to airline employees, with 92 percent of respondents making use of these tools to plan personal or leisure trips and 56 percent of respondents intending to travel more in 2022 than they did in 2019.
• Two-thirds of respondents indicated that it was "somewhat/very important" for them to have access to an in-house personal travel tool allowing them to book hotels, cruises, and more using special, unpublished discount rates offered by travel suppliers to airline employees.
• Staff travel is used for a variety of reasons, with 28 percent of respondents using travel privileges for business travel.
• Customer service is in need of improvement across the industry. Asked to score the customer service they receive from their airlines' staff travel channels, airline employees responded with an anemic score of 5.23 out of seven possible points.
• Key functionality is missing from staff travel options, with fewer than half of respondents (48 percent) able to request staff travel refunds online, and just 29 percent of respondents able to correct errors in existing flight listings.
• Tapping into friends and family travel perks creates an undue burden for airline employees due to a lack of automation in the enrollment and listing, booking and trip management processes.

This represents a significant opportunity for airlines to improve efficiency, lower costs, and potentially improve employee job satisfaction.

For more information on ID90 Travel and innovation in the non-rev travel space, visit https://www.id90travel.com. To learn more about Atmosphere Research Group, visit. https://atmosphereresearch.com.

About ID90 Travel

ID90 Travel is a Dallas-based technology leader that is reinventing the way airlines manage employee non-revenue travel, improving the travel experience, and reducing costs. The world's airlines employ roughly 11.3 million people, accounting for millions of non-revenue trips booked each year. ID90 Travel's proprietary, one-stop SaaS platform automates and reduces costs associated with airline employee travel programs, resulting in significant cost savings for the airlines and a richer, more frictionless experience for travelers. With offices in Dallas and Argentina, ID90 Travel's clients include some of the largest carriers in the world, including United Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, Frontier Airlines, Alaska Airlines, Spirit, Czech Airlines and Aeroflot, to name a few. For more information, visit http://www.ID90travel.com.

About Atmosphere Research

San Francisco, CA-based Atmosphere Research Group is an independent, objective, and unbiased strategic marketing research and advisory firm serving the global travel industry. Since its start in September 2011, Atmosphere Research has emerged as a source of unexpected, trustworthy, and forward-thinking strategic insights into traveler behaviors and attitudes, travel industry commercial topics, and travel industry technology trends. Atmosphere conducts consumer and industry research worldwide, and works with travel suppliers and intermediaries, technology firms, and financial and investment groups globally. For more information, please visit AtmosphereResearch.com or email [email protected].

Media Contact

Michael Frenkel, M Frenkel Communications. Inc., +1 2013177035, [email protected]

SOURCE ID90 Travel