Airline Websites

The New, Sleek Airline Web Site

By JOE SHARKEY

Domestic airlines are discovering that by redesigning their Web sites, they can cut costs, shore up the loyalty of business travelers and even lure customers away from other travel sites.

On many reworked airline sites, for example, customers can easily manage their frequent-flier accounts; travel awards and upgrades, which typically used to be arranged over the phone with an airline clerk, now can be easily booked online. Some sites display calendars showing open dates and seat-availability charts.

As international travel grows, airlines have also simplified the process of booking complicated schedules to just a few clicks ­ including travel with two airlines that are code-sharing partners.

Many travelers are also drawn to online check-in, which permits passengers to print out their boarding passes and is now a standard feature at airline Web sites. The sites give airlines the ability to promote special fares and other offers through direct marketing and e-mail alerts.

Many of the airlines’ Web site initiatives are aimed at increasing, or regaining, business travelers’ loyalty.

“Business travelers in general are people who are self-motivated,” said Travis Christ, the vice president of marketing for US Airways. “They know what they want and where they want to go. The trick is to improve the level of empowerment available to them online.”

For the airlines, driving customers to company Web sites has an added bonus: they save commissions they would otherwise have to pay to travel agents to book the fares.

American Airlines has made significant improvements to its AA.com site, starting in early 2005. That is when it started guaranteeing that anyone who found a lower fare on any third-party booking site ­ like Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz ­ would receive a $50 travel voucher and a refund of the difference between the fares.

The promotion, along with other improvements, appears to be paying off. “We’re coming off a record month in May, when we had 40 million unique visitors, and we generated more revenue in a single month on AA.com than we’ve ever generated,” Rob Friedman, the managing director for interactive marketing at the airline, said.

Several factors have prodded airlines to upgrade their Web sites, including the rise in recent years of discount airlines and third-party booking sites, which have used the Internet to make it easier to search for low fares.

Discount airlines have nearly a 30 percent share of the domestic market now, and third-party travel sites book about half of all online airline tickets. Meanwhile, major airlines have been frantically trying to survive by cutting staff and costs, and dropping fares to match the low-cost airline competition. For a time, Web sites were not a priority, but that has changed.

“Airlines are finding the budgets to improve their Web sites,” said Diane Clarkson, the lead travel analyst with JupiterResearch.

The ability to get a slightly cheaper fare than might be found on a third-party Web site is a major reason for the growth in traffic to airline sites, she said.

“There is a segment of people who simply don’t want to pay the extra five bucks for a booking fee” to third-party sites, Ms. Clarkson said.

Last year, nearly 150 million consumers visited a travel Web site, an increase of 35 percent from 2004, said Sara Stevens, a senior director at comScore Networks, which studies online consumer trends.

Airline tickets accounted for about two-thirds of the $60 billion spent at airline and other consumer travel sites last year, she said. Corporate travel management companies, which negotiate volume travel deals between suppliers and companies and use proprietary Web sites for booking, are not included in those totals.

While the third-party sites continue to grow as demand for travel surges, airline Web sites are now growing at a faster rate.

Delta Air Lines recently revamped its Web site, adding new features in various languages to make it easier to use anywhere in the world as the airline has shifted capacity to overseas flights. “It isn’t a place just for buying tickets,” Josh Weiss, managing director for Delta.com, said.

But Ms. Stevens of comScore Networks said the third-party sites “have many advantages and they are still continuing to grow in revenues.”

Though airline tickets still account for about 50 percent of revenue on third-party sites, those sites have been focusing on improving customer service, and on “diversifying into higher-margin products, like hotels and travel packages, to appeal to a broader segment of consumers,” she said.

Redesigning a Web site is not without its hazards. Many business travelers were enraged last month when US Airways, which merged last year with America West, introduced a new Web site merging both airlines’ sites.

With their technological tangles of fares, schedules and services that can change in an instant, major airline Web sites are complicated. Merging two of them in real time can be a nightmare ­ and was. US Airways had to contend with thousands of unhappy customers who complained about mangled reservations and other problems.

“Technologically, airline Web sites are as complicated a retail site as you’re ever going to see,” said Mr. Christ of US Airways, who added that most of the problems had been worked out.

“Customers have told us, over and over, they want a simple, seamless process to do a lot of complicated things, and it’s very hard to get there,” he said.

Functionality, scheduling convenience, ease of use on the road anywhere in the world ­ these are all goals that will possibly increase revenue from business travelers willing to pay a little more some day for a lot more online service, Mr. Christ said.

But first things first. “We unfortunately have to face the reality that air travel is still largely a commodity,” he said. “We have to take unnecessary expenses out of the system, and a good Web site will do that because every time we sell a ticket through someone else, there is a cost involved.”

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company