Disrupted traveler spends with their agents by a third during major flight disruptions has been reduces by Gant Travel on August 10, 2018, as a result of integrating FlightGlobal’s Travel Waiver Services.
Disrupted Traveler ‘s Time Cuts By Gant Travel
“With an average decrease of 10%, Gant drove a cost reduction just by giving agents an automated
process for knowing when a traveler’s flight qualifies for a waiver. How can you put a dollar amount
on having smarter (well informed) agents, and without having to do any extra training at that?”
Patrick Linnihan, President & CEO of Gant Travel Management.
Known for their innovation, Gant Travel saw the great benefits that this solution would bring to their
business model. After six months, interviews with agents proved they no longer needed to validate
the waiver with an airline and confirmed that they trusted the information in the record.
“The trust in our data is attributed to how we constantly fine-tune and evaluate our processes and
apply the eye of an industry expert. By comparing five major storms in 2017, like for like, we see a
statistical decrease of 50% in time spent by agents talking to an airline,” said Kate Harris, FlightGlobal
Data Scientist
When a major disruption, like a severe storm or hurricane affects flights, airlines issue exceptions to
their change fee policies in order to better accommodate travelers and reduce friction in operations
and re-accommodations. In 2017, FlightGlobal tracked over 36 million flights around the world,
including almost 2 million that had a disruption consisting of a cancellation diversion or arrival delay
greater than 60 minutes.
Gant Travel originally partnered with FlightGlobal in 2017, as the first Travel Management Company
(TMC) integrating airline published waivers directly into the agent workflow. A joint team led by
FlightGlobal’s data scientists analyzed before and after agent activity across 12 months to find actual
operational savings leading to a new competitive insight.
FlightGlobal’s Travel Waiver Services is the industry’s only matching engine which integrates flight
status data with airline travelers’ itinerary information. It enables TMCs and travel service providers
(such as airlines) to offer travelers re-booking on to alternate flights without paying a change fee when
severe weather or other major events impact the airline’s operations.
Read more about this at Bellevue Business Journal.