How Cyprus Airways improves website conversion with PROS Shopping

The customer

Cyprus Airways is the flag carrier of the Republic of Cyprus – an island in the east Mediterranean. Its brand dates back to the 1940s and today, fully relaunched, the airline serves 17 destinations in Europe and the Middle East, carrying over half a million passengers annually on modern Airbus A320 and A220 aircraft.

With the mission to help increase tourism in the country, Cyprus Airways is committed to building a strong and reliable airline, while offering safe and enjoyable flights that blend luxury with comfort.

Cyprus Airways has been on a journey of growth for the past few years. After the acquisition from ArcosJet, an accelerated digital transformation began in the airline, focused on improving customer satisfaction, driving innovation and operational efficiency.

Cyprus Airways has been looking for the right partners to support their transformation efforts as they expand their operations and gain more market share.

The challenge

To fuel its digital shopping experience on cyprusairways.com, Cyprus Airways had been in the past relying on Google ITA’s shopping and pricing solution. Due to the lack of support from the digital giant, the airline had to move to a basic in-house pricing engine. However, the solution kept underperforming and impacting the airline’s ability to offer dynamic and accurate pricing, ultimately leading to increased costs and missed bookings. In addition, the lack of dynamic pricing capabilities limited their competitive edge in the market.

“Before we implemented the PROS solution, we had a lot of discrepancy in the prices and errors, which ended up hitting a lot of low conversion rates on the website.”

- Chrysanni Michael, Head of Passenger Service Systems, Cyprus Airways

Cyprus Airways needed a reliable, flexible, and fully ATPCO-compliant shopping solution, capable of generating accurate and dynamic offers for their revamped website, as well as for other direct distribution channels.

The airline had three non-negotiable needs for their future pricing engine:

• Highest offer accuracy for own, as well as for codeshare and interline flights, critical for the airline’s sales strategy.
• Offer flexibility and control for different sales and distribution channels.
• Reasonable and predictable cost of ownership.

Solution & Implementation

Cyprus Airways selected PROS to solve their challenges in digital shopping, relying on PROS industry expertise, cost-effective solutions and quick time to market.

The airline started a 5-month implementation of PROS Offer Creation solutions for shopping and repricing on their website, while at the same time fully transforming their dotcom with a 3rd party internet booking engine (IBE).

“When PROS says five months, it's five months. Other providers might give a different timeline. So, we're happy and you're spot on to their delivery dates, which is very important to us going forward.”

- Pavlos Sarkas, IT Manager, Cyprus Airways

The Cyprus Airways team first needed to improve flight shopping accuracy: for their own marketed and operated flights, and for codeshare and interline partner flights, as some offers were unavailable with the old pricing engine.

The carrier implemented PROS Shopping on their dotcom for its rich capabilities and ATPCO connectivity, and started displaying fast and accurate offers that helped increase online conversion.

As next step, Cyprus Airways was able to simplify and speed up the self-serve process for ticket changes and refunds, thus improving customer experience and capturing new revenue opportunities.

As a smaller carrier with limited internal resources Cyprus Airways relied on PROS responsiveness, fast execution and accountability for meeting project deadlines and delivering on time, with both – old and new, booking engines running simultaneously during the transition. Cyprus Airways’ and PROS teams worked tirelessly to speed-up the implementation and make the switch to the new IBE as seamless as possible. PROS flexibility in terms of connectivity to third-party providers helped smooth out the process by providing guidance and technical support to the new IBE vendor.

Watch the video to learn more about Cyprus Airways’ journey with PROS:

Results

Cyprus Airways’ ambitions for revamping their dotcom shopping experience materialized – the implementation of PROS solutions quickly delivered results, helping the airline improve offer accuracy on their website, increase conversion rate, and realize cost-savings by reducing distribution cost.

“The pricing comes really on accurate basis. So, we're not losing any customers from our IBE or showing discrepancies.”

- Pavlos Sarkas, IT Manager, Cyprus Airways

“We gained more control on how we distribute and who is hitting our prices. This has reduced our costs.”

- Chrysanni Michael, Head of Passenger Service Systems, Cyprus Airways

With the help of PROS solutions, Cyprus Airways now has better control over online sales and distribution. The airline today has a fully redesigned flight shopping experience that is fast, accurate, and offers a broader range of solutions to travelers.

Enabled with more offer control, the airline is laser focused on their digital transformation forward and bringing more revenue from deploying new strategies around merchandising, NDC distribution, and more in the near future.

Learn more about PROS Offer Creation solutions on PROS Marketplace.