SkyScanner’s Business Overview:
Skyscanner is the world’s leading travel distribution platform. As a market leader in travel search Skyscanner provides insight which makes business as effective as possible. Browse the insights on travel industry, focusing on travel trends, technology and analysis of the travel market place.
SkyScanner aims to provide services for users from all locations, ages and financial capability.
Industry Behaviour:
- A global increase in January searches 2018 has shown a shift with January becoming the most popular month for searches across the board.
- Greater alignment between searches and exits. This year we have January as the most popular month for both searches and exits – indicating a stronger search intent and stronger correlation between search and exit.
- Weekdays are the most popular days of the week to search and exit – Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the most popular days for searches and exits. With EMEA and APAC users favouring Monday and Tuesday, and AMER users preferring Tuesday and Wednesday.
- Saturdays are the least popular day of the week for searches and exits – global data highlights that in contrast, during the weekend (specifically Saturday) fewer users are searching and exiting.
Key Customer Personas
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Customer Journey
| James journey map | Awareness | Research | Conversion | Post-Sale Engagement |
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Searching for flights on a specific date. (1) | Makes decision to choose a specific flight. (3) | ||
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| Phone / Call center | Call to see if there’s flight that are not overnight (2) | |||
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| Receive an email with flight confirmation. (3) | Receives an email requesting feedback (4) | |||
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| Mobile app | Brows on the suggestion page to find affordable flights (2) | Chooses a flight and makes payment (4) | ||
| Social media | Follow Facebook/Instagram page to receive low cost deals (1) | |||
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| Chat support | Discuss with chat support if the flight is suitable for him (3) | |||
| Receives confirmation and receipt (5) | Gets contacted for more low cost flights (6) | |||
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SkyScanner’s Competition:
Although SkyScanner is the leading platform for booking flights there’s almost 14 other platforms that users have access to and can get similar prices and services, especially KAYAK and Expedia (Finder, 2017). However, Expedia is considered to be the main competitor for Skyscanner because of many factors;
Online presence: Expedia is more active online as they are more active because they don’t just promote service but also they promote their blog as well. for example on twitter Expedia has double the followers of Skyscanner.
Gaining more followers; on the main website and App Expedia focuses on making visitors sign up before any other thing which made the business get more customers as after signing up they’ll receive offers.
Analysis of SkyScanner, Expedia and KAYAK
Skyscanner gives access to the millions of users each month.
Online Travel services follow a different markup on airplane tickets in different sales channels. For example different sale channels include: newsletter, organic, Google adwords, “old fashion” affiliate, mobile, tablet, desktop and Metasearch.
The same airplane ticket could have different fares dependent of where and when the ticket is sold. It’s important that these businesses acknowledge in which country the airline ticket is sold and which country the airline ticket departure when users look at an airline ticket price. In a global world with eCommerce without borders airlines revenue management has new challenges, otherwise airlines suffer opportunity loss. Therefore, online booking has tremendous advantages against all other sales channels.
On the other hand, SkyScanner has the most user friendly experience especially on the App, The layout is very simple and more attractive than the other 2 websites.
The User Interface of the App is user friendly as it has nice light blue color which represents the vibes of going on holidays to beachy place. Also, it shows the previous flights that the user checked in case the user want to book it. Finally SkyScanner suggests a holiday package with accommodation and transport which helped the business a lot in gaining more users.
References:
Finder.com.au. (2016). 14 sites like Skyscanner to find the cheapest flights | finder.com.au. [online] Available at: https://www.finder.com.au/sites-like-skyscanner [Accessed 10 Dec. 2018].
Skyscanner’s Travel Blog. (2018). Does Skyscanner manage my booking and flight details? | Skyscanner’s Travel Blog. [online] Available at: https://www.skyscanner.net/news/tips/does-skyscanner-manage-my-booking [Accessed 12 Dec. 2018].
