Transforming pricing capability in online travel
Supported an online travel agent to step-change their pricing capabilities, enabling accelerated growth out of the pandemic.
Our work applied best-in-class standards to this recently PE-acquired business, radically upgrading capabilities, processes, and supporting systems, and leaving the client’s team well-equipped to navigate the ongoing challenges to the industry.
Context
Our client is a leading online travel agent with a presence in 5 European countries. When the COVID-19 crisis hit sales and left their pricing/revenue management staff underutilised, they resolved to invest in the team’s capabilities, ready to accelerate out of the crisis.
Our objective was to support them to rapidly optimise base pricing, marketing effectiveness and ROI, and to develop value-based pricing for ancillaries.
Approach
With decades of pricing experience between them, our senior consultants oversaw a combined client and consulting team to assess current practices, define new approaches, train on new capabilities, and build new supporting tools.
Within 4 months the programme delivered a series of quick wins, as well as setting in place the concrete changes to ways of working that would drive the broader pricing optimisation. A capability maturity index supported the management and measurement of the new approaches.
Impact
The client’s bold investment in the future paid off: with capabilities improved well beyond the initial ambitions for the project, they went on to accelerate growth in volume and margins, even as they unexpectedly navigated successive waves of the crisis.