A Day With American Airlines
Travelfli rounded out our trip to Dallas with a series of meetings with American Airlines. I was really excited to meet these folks because they were responsible for launching the first travel awards program EVER in 1981! AAdvantage to this day is the largest frequent flyer program with well over 50 million members.
Krista & Dan in the customary headquarter sign pose (Dan is really excited)
We were also very interested in meeting with the AA distribution group in light of their recent ‘breakup’ with Kayak. Seeing as how our distribution model is similar to Kayak’s, we wanted very much to gain a better understanding of their general opinion on meta search engines.
Our meetings began with two extremely intelligent women from the distribution side of the company. Alice Curry, the Director of Distribution Strategy, and Chris Roath, the Global Account Development Manager, are responsible for the partnerships with meta search engines, online travel agencies (OTA’s) and AA’s retail strategy.
We were relieved to hear that American Airlines doesn’t have a problem with meta search engines in general. They partner with a handful of companies already, including Mobissimo and Farecast, and would have no problem partnering with us. Their decision to step away from Kayak was unrelated to the distribution model. In fact, AA validated the trend we’ve been seeing in all of our visits with the airlines that meta search is a favorable and growing form of distribution for them.
Alice and Chris provided us with some great feedback on our product and ultimately presented some interesting issues for us to consider. Our second meeting on the loyalty side was just as interesting. We met with Winston Lam, the Team Lead for AAdvantage Partners. He is responsible for the strategic analysis for new partnership opportunities and all of the relationships with hotels. Winston had a unique perspective on the business, I think in part due to his experience on the revenue management team. We had some great conversations regarding their loyalty program and how Travelfli could help them increase traffic and stickiness on the site.
Winston & Krista
Side Note: Winston reminded us that changes to required mileage levels for select award tickets and upgrades would be effective beginning on October 1, 2008.
Thanks to Alice, Chris and Winston for your time! It was very obvious to us why American Airlines continues to be the largest airline in terms of passenger miles and the largest loyalty program in terms of members. They are sharp people and they know how to run their business.
