In the news: It’s all about airlines and flights this week with Tigerair Australia’s new chatbot, KLM’s offering of WeChat Pay and booking flights on hotel websites
CHATBOTS: Meet Toby the Chatbot – Tigerair Australia’s new personal travel consultant
Toby helps to search and book flights
The next time you make a booking with Tigerair Australia you can talk to ‘Toby’, the airline’s Facebook Messenger chatbot that can help you search and book flights, retrieve current itineraries and answer questions relating to your flight.
To start a conversation with Toby, named after Tigerair’s mascot, visit the chatbot’s page on the airline’s homepage or its Facebook page. You can also iniatiate a chat by opening Facebook Messenger and search for ‘Toby – Tigerair Australia’.
Click on the ‘Get Started’ button at the bottom of the Messenger screen, and Toby will reply with a welcome message and some quick action buttons outlining the functions he can provide. If you don’t want to use the ‘search flights’ button simply tell Toby where you wish to fly to begin the process.
Toby completes an up-to-the-minute flight availability search based on the information you provide such as flight origin and destination, dates, number of passengers and deliver the most suitable flight options to you. Select the flight, and you are transferred to Tigerair’s online booking engine to complete the booking.
Andrew Maister, Tigerair Australia commercial director, said Toby is the latest innovation by the airline to make booking and flying Tigerair more convenient and interactive than ever before.
“The introduction of Toby provides another option for our customers to assist with searching and booking flights with Tigerair. Toby acts as your own personal travel consultant at any time of the day or night, helping you search for the best value flights for your next trip and guiding you through the booking process.”
He revealed Toby focused on doing the basics right and learning during his training. “Once he’s earned his stripes over coming months he will progressively be taking on a broader range of customer queries associated with booking and flying Tigerair.”
Toby’s duties for now is to help facilitate bookings and answer basic customer queries. He may not be able to attend to detailed questions or feedback relating to their booking or flight experience.
“At any point where Toby cannot help, the user can request to speak to a human and will be transferred over to Tigerair’s social media team who will be able to provide more detailed assistance,” advises the airline.
SOCIAL MEDIA: KLM is the first non-Chinese airline to offer WeChat Pay
KLM passengers can use WeChat Pay to buy tickets and ancillaries (Image credit: WeChat)
Passengers on KLM Royal Dutch Airlines can pay for their tickets and ancillaries via WeChat Pay on KLM.com and WeChat, making it the first non-Chinese airline to offer this payment option.
This is how it works: Once a passenger booked a ticket on KLM.com via desktop and chooses WeChat as the preferred payment option, a QR code appears. On scanning this code the user is taken to WeChat Pay, the money is amortised and payment is done. A customer booking a ticket on mobile or the WeChat app, and chooses WeChat as the preferred payment, is automatically referred to WeChat Pay to pay for the ticket. Users need to bind their bankcard only once to use WeChat Pay.
“The WeChat Pay option is a perfect next step in KLM’s social media strategy. We believe we should be where our customers are. In China we therefore have to be on WeChat, as it has developed into an incredibly important market for KLM,” said Pieter Elbers, president & CEO if KLM.
KLM opened a WeChat account in 2014 offering its Chinese passengers service, brand content and commercial offers via the social media platform. Since this May the airline’s customers have the choice to receive their booking confirmation, check-in notification, boarding pass and flight status updates via WeChat. To date, about 25% of all KLM’s Chinese customers booking online opt for this option.
TRAVEL TECHNOLOGY: Sabre’s partnership with Japan’s Time Design enables hotels to provide flight booking
Booking flights on hotel’s website possible now (Image credit: sakdam/iStock)
Hotels are now able to list travel packages, combining hotel reservations with airline tickets, on their website with the integration of Sabre Hospitality Solutions’ SynXis Central Reservations and Time Design’s Dynamic Global Dynamic Package Solution.
The solution combines real-time availability and prices of both accommodations and transportation (such as international airline tickets), and allows travellers to book both rooms and flights at the same time on the hotels’ official websites across mobile phones, tablets or PCs.
Travellers visiting a hotel’s official website with the Time Design solution are able to choose airline tickets from a variety of airline carriers (including Low Cost Carriers) by specifying the airline name, alliance, prices, departure and arrival times, flights routes as well as other options.
Yuzo Takamatsu, president CEO of Time Design, said previously travellers were only able to book hotels and airline tickets at the same time through a travel agent or Online Travel Agency (OTA).
“Wth our solution travellers are able to book both rooms and airline tickets from a hotel’s official website. This not only makes it easier for travellers to make reservations, it also lets hotels improve their service offering and reduce channel cost against OTAs.
“We believe hotels’ official websites offer the best deals nowadays and want to shift the existing distribution to hotels’ official websites by letting the hotels to have travel packages as their sales option,” Takamatsu added.
Sabre Hospitality Solutions’ SynXis Central Reservations provides rates and inventory distribution through all online and offline distribution channels; connects to more than 450 OTAs, website and mobile booking engines; and integrates property, revenue management, loyalty and content systems.
• Featured image credit: charles-taylor/iStock
