Modern airline retailing demands more than traffic; it requires seamlessly connecting customer intent, dynamic offers, and conversion in real time, across every step of the journey. In this webinar, learn how Cyprus Airways modernized its digital retailing strategy by transforming its website into a demand-led sales channel powered end-to-end by PROS, from the homepage through the booking flow. With airTRFX as the core site and PROS Digital Retail powering real-time pricing and the booking experience, Cyprus Airways shows how a fully integrated PROS stack can deliver immediate gains in direct revenue, marketing agility, and operational efficiency.
Key Topics
- How Cyprus Airways re-architected its website around demand and offers Moving from static pages and homepage-led journeys to SEO-optimized, bookable landing pages powered by real-time pricing, with airTRFX at the core and PROS Digital Retail driving the booking flow.
- The commercial impact of aligning traffic, pricing, and conversion
Achieving a +19.5pp increase in web bookings share and +20.5pp increase in web revenue share within one month of launch. - Operational and marketing agility with airTRFX
Expanding global SEO, AEO and GEO footprint, reducing campaign launch time from weeks to hours, and enabling commercial teams to act without IT dependency.
Speakers
Pavlos Sarkas
IT Manager, Cyprus Airways
Desiree Tipuric
Senior Manager, Professional
Services, OM, PROS
Full Transcript
0:25
Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us today.
0:29
My name is Emily Glaize, and I am a Senior Account Executive at PROS, and I’m delighted today to host this session alongside Cyprus Airways.
0:39
Today, what we’re going to do, we’re going to look at how Cyprus Airways turning its website into a real revenue driver.
0:45
We will explore the importance of digital retail transformation and how airlines can better connect demands personalized offer and conversion to drive both customer value and revenue growth.
0:59
Joining me today are Desiree from PROS and Pavlos from Cyprus Airways, and I’m going to ask Pavlos and Desiree to introduce themselves before we get started.
1:11
Hi, thank you, Emily.
1:12
Thanks for thanks for the invite.
1:15
So I’m Pavlos Sarkas, I’m the IT Manager of Cyprus Airways, where I oversee the airline’s technology and digital transformation initiatives.
1:24
Over the past few years here, I had the opportunity to work closely with our commercial and marketing operational teams.
1:31
Projects focus on improving our customer experience, growing direct sales and modernizing our ecosystem.
1:38
Looking forward to sharing the Cyprus Airways journey and some of the lessons we’ve learned along the way with pros.
1:46
Thank you, Pavlos.
1:48
Desiree, would you like to introduce yourself now too, please?
1:52
Hi, everyone.
1:53
Thanks for joining today.
1:54
My name is Desiree Tipuric.
1:56
I lead the product operations team for offer marketing at Pro.
1:59
Some of you I’ve had the pleasure to work with already in the past.
2:04
And this time I had the pleasure of working alongside Emily and Pavlos from Cyprus Airways for this first of a kind AirTRFX’s use case that showcases how flexible our product really is.
2:14
And I’m excited to show you this today.
2:16
Cyprus Airways is a strong example of how you can turn an airline website really into a revenue engine because of how they move to a fully connected model where content, pricing and booking are all aligned.
2:28
And the exciting thing is that the impact was visible almost immediately and Pavlos will tell you all about it.
2:33
So I’m looking forward to our session.
2:36
Thank you, Desiree.
2:38
Before we start with the Cyprus every stories, I would like to step back for a moment and look at what is changing in the airline retailing world today.
2:50
For many years airline websites were mainly used to book flights, but this is not changing today.
2:58
Airline websites are becoming important in your channel, not just booking tools.
3:03
Airlines are moving from simply selling flights to offering more personalized and flexible offers.
3:11
Travelers don’t think about fares or booking steps; they think about where they want to go and what they want to experience and the value they’re going to get.
3:21
So airlines need to react very quickly to show the right offer at the right time.
3:28
That’s what we are going, you know, to talk about today and Cyprus Subways is a great example of this change.
3:35
They’re going to show you how the website can become a true retail channel in every time customer focus is offered.
3:42
So Pavlos, would you like to begin with by giving us a brief introduction of Cyprus Airways and also Cyprus Airways digital priorities?
3:54
Hi, thank you, Emily.
3:56
So Cyprus Airways is the flag carrier of Cyprus, a small island in the Mediterranean.
4:01
I mean, probably connecting the island with destinations across Europe, Middle East and expanding further.
4:07
As an airline now our focus is on delivering high quality travel experience, expanding our network overall, modernizing our fleet.
4:16
We’ve got the brand new A2 20s, continually invest in innovation, benefits for our passengers and supporting that vision is a strong focus on our digital transformation.
4:29
Our priorities have been growing direct sales, improving the customer journey overall and increase in agility.
4:38
Agility is a word you’ll be hearing a lot today.
4:40
So across the business and creating a modern retail ecosystem basically for us to better connect customer demand with relevant offers and services.
4:53
Thank you, Pavlos for your introduction and explaining to our audience today your digital priorities.
5:00
Desiree, I would like to ask you, you know, some questions.
5:05
The first one is, according to you, what is the airline website becoming the most strategic sales channel today?
5:13
OK, look everyone, he already knows that direct is cheaper and gives you more control.
5:18
The more interesting shift right now is what the website has become.
5:22
It’s no longer customers buy or users buy.
5:24
And beyond that, it’s the source of truth that feeds all other channels that are out there.
5:30
If you think about it, the fairs and content you publish on your website is what Google ranks, what meta search scrapes and also what now increasingly AI assistants like Chachi PT reading site, right?
5:43
So your site has become a more strategic asset because essentially the data layer behind it, it’s the data layer behind the entire discovery footprint, right?
5:53
And that brings a whole new level of pressure.
5:56
So you might ask why?
5:59
Well, to put it simple, if your pages are thin in data or your fares aren’t machine readable, you don’t just lose a booking.
6:07
You also go invisible in places like AI search, right?
6:13
So this usually means that an OTA captures the click instead.
6:17
So in many cases, with AI search currently on the rise, we’re back at where we were some 10 years ago.
6:22
Some of you might remember back in the trenches fighting the war against OTAs, right where they capture a big majority of the traffic.
6:28
So this is happening right now, and you need to be on top of the game to really gain visibility there.
6:37
SEO is the baseline also for AI search visibility, and we’ll get to it a little bit later.
6:41
But your website essentially is strategic today because it’s where you either own or surrender your discoverability.
6:48
So if you’re data poor, you’re essentially invisible.
6:51
That makes sense totally.
6:54
There’s a risk.
6:54
Thank you so much.
6:55
But can you tell us why airlines today investing more in direct retail growth and why today an airline can’t, you know remain as simple booking tools?
7:08
And also I think if you can also give us your point of view on how the travelers expectations are evolving, that would be interesting for our audience.
7:20
Yeah, I think it really comes down to not getting pushed out of the value chain again, right?
7:24
As you know, airlines fought very hard to take back the share from OTAs and AI is stepping in as a new middle layer, as I already mentioned.
7:33
So if you’re not retailing directly, you can very quickly become interchangeable.
7:38
It’s not about just making money, it’s more about not losing control overall.
7:42
So which is also why the website can’t just be a booking tool anymore.
7:47
Such a tool just captures demand and that’s already there of someone who’s already decided on you, right?
7:54
On the other hand, a revenue engine does more.
7:56
It shows up earlier with a real offer and a reason for the user to choose you before the decision is even made.
8:03
And additionally, customer expectations have also shifted.
8:06
So if you think about it, people don’t want to search, they want the answers and they expect them wherever they already are.
8:12
So you need to be visible and readable no matter where demand shows up and not just on your side, but an essential layer here.
8:20
Thanks for answering those questions, Pavlos.
8:25
It would be great if you can tell us before this project, before all this transformation started as separate surveys.
8:32
How would you describe the role of your website before?
8:38
Yes, Emily.
8:38
So before a transformation a website like mostly in the market website is mainly functioning as a traditional airline booking tool.
8:50
Passengers could search for book for flights, but it wasn’t fully operating as a dynamic retailer on every new channel.
8:56
So the customer journey was quite home page LED and in many, many ways static.
9:03
So campaigns, destination content, pricing, availability and the booking flow, we’re not as connected as we wanted them to be.
9:13
So as an airline wanted basically to increase direct sales, I think everybody listening in and all airlines around the world as demanding as everything is, especially in Europe, direct sales.
9:27
So improve discoverability, launch campaigns faster, provide a more modern customer experience.
9:34
To achieve that, we need a platform that could better connect what we offer, the pricing, the booking into a single customer journey.
9:45
So that’s basically that, the transformation we wanted to achieve.
9:51
Thanks, Pavlos.
9:51
But what limitation did you see?
9:54
What was the challenge, what challenges existed before?
9:58
Can you tell us more about that as the beginning agility.
10:04
So the main limitations were agility and the connection between content, office pricing and the booking.
10:11
I mean launching campaigns or even landing page were slower and often required us, you know IT involvement syncing within all the teams internally, which basically reduced our ability to basically react quickly to market opportunities.
10:28
Something new that’s coming up or marketing wanted to act really fast.
10:34
So we also wanted to move away from static pages and create static pages.
10:40
And this is a route, this is a price.
10:41
So and create more static pages and create a more demand LED customer journey.
10:46
OK, so where customers could basically land directly on a relevant content that they’re interested in, see light pricing on the spot.
10:54
Exactly what’s that route going to cost me and what’s the right time to go and then move naturally into the booking without taking them to another static page or confusing them.
11:07
So for us, it wasn’t only about generating traffic, that’s one part.
11:11
It was about how effectively we could convert that traffic, improve the customer experience and react faster from a commercial perspective.
11:22
Thanks, Pavlos.
11:24
Were you struggling more with traffic acquisition conversion agility or conversion agility or everything together?
11:37
OK, we’re not necessarily struggling with traffic acquisition alone.
11:42
That can be handled same in some ways.
11:45
The bigger, the bigger opportunity was around how effectively we can convert that traffic coming in and personalize the customer experience and react more quickly from a commercial perspective.
11:59
So you’ve got that customer in, you’ve got that traffic, don’t lose him.
12:03
You need to convert that into a sale.
12:05
So agility was also an important factor, but we wanted to be able to launch fast to adapt to the market demand more quickly and reduce the time between the idea, OK, let’s go to that, let’s go to Cyprus Airways and actually the execution.
12:23
So we also recognize that customer behavior was changing significantly and that is your experience needed to evolve with it.
12:33
So yeah, yeah, what Pavlos just described is exactly the problem and traffic is solving and here’s why.
12:40
Because we’re not relying on static home, static homepage anymore, but we turn that inside out and with the help of your traffics because it automatically creates pages for every route, as you all know, and populates them with live fares in real time.
12:53
And that’s really so important for the data rich content on the pages.
12:58
So customers land straight on what they’re searching for with a price that they can actually book in that matters.
13:05
So in terms of the technical dependency Pavlos mentioned, that dependency is actually where the biggest shift happens from an operational perspective.
13:14
So marketing doesn’t have to wait on development anymore.
13:16
They can autonomously spin up companies and pages themselves and just use templates and modules within airTRFX.
13:23
So instead of weeks of coordination and execution, it’s just hours of streamlined work.
13:29
And I’m sure many in the audience have a similar experience with airTRFX.
13:33
So, and because for Cyprus in that use case, it’s all pros powered, it’s one connected journey end to end, which means that pricing, continent, conversional or are all In Sync.
13:46
And here’s an interesting part in why that matters even more now.
13:48
Those fares are real text on the page and are not hidden behind scripts, which means they can be read by Google, they can be read by AI search engines, and that’s even more important.
14:02
So yeah, travel discovery is happening through AI assistance increasingly.
14:08
And that’s why Cyprus Airways is so well positioned now with using airTRFXs as their core side solution.
14:15
And because the tool was built for SEO performance, which is the baseline for AI search visibility that I mentioned before.
14:21
So when someone asks where to fly, Cyprus can actually show up in the answer and drive traffic back to its own booking flow.
14:30
Thank you, Desi for, you know, your insight here.
14:33
I think that now that we have set up the stage, I would like maybe to end it over to you and Desi.
14:40
If you can showcase the outcome and maybe walk us through the Cypress Airways website transformation, that would be fantastic.
14:47
Of course, I’m excited.
14:50
So let’s get the screen share going before we dive into a live demo.
14:55
I wanted for everybody to have a quick glimpse of the architecture or the high level idea of what actually happened, right?
15:02
So I mentioned Cypress Airways is now using airTRFXs as a core site, meaning there’s no other CMS or provider involved in poweringcypressairways.com.
15:14
It’s all PROS powered.
15:15
So what you can see here is the airline homepage, cypressairways.com is actually the airTRFX sound template.
15:23
When we will go to it in a second, you’ll find some elements that you might recognize, but some others are not.
15:31
And then from there we extend to the landing pages.
15:34
So that already existed before the transformation, but now what Cyprus did.
15:38
They also added the airline admin pages, anything about flight information, plan your trip, special assistance, baggage information.
15:46
All of these static content pages that help users learn more about information about their trip, the airline and so on are now placed within the AirTRFX’s page infrastructure through the AirTRFX’s custom page template.
16:04
And from there we book, we book.
16:08
I mean we the user goes directly to the booking engine that is also pros powered.
16:13
It’s called pros digital retail.
16:15
Some of you have might have heard about it.
16:17
And there you just go through the typical booking flow where you have a flight selection, you enter the traveler details, select your extras and finally book.
16:25
And what this platform also does is Cyprus manages the management booking feature part through it.
16:34
So this is all living on the sub domain bookcyprusairways.com, but it’s part of the ecosystem of these things that are powered by pros.
16:43
And then we have a very special partner 2E systems that work with us and they provide for this use case, the mobile app for both iOS and Android and the web check in and many other things that I just didn’t have the space.
16:58
And to add to these slides here.
17:00
But this is for you to have an overview how the transformation was done on an architectural level.
17:08
Now let’s go actually take a look at the website.
17:12
So I hope, yes, I think you can see my screen with the website, so this is cyprusairways.com.
17:19
Usually what you would see here under this directory would be airTRFX.
17:25
As I mentioned, this is all the homepage right now of the airline itself, not only the airTRFX sub page.
17:33
So if you see here, there’s some familiar elements, the booking mask and so on, you can book.
17:40
We have some daily fares here powered by fast search as well, where you can select the user has more visibility into the price per day, when to travel.
17:54
And then when we initiate a booking here, it will take us straight to bookcyprusairways.com, which is pros digital retail where you have the flight selection and all the other steps that for the sake of time, I’m not going to go into today, but let’s go back to the homepage.
18:15
So let’s just take a little look.
18:19
There’s some linking here to manage my booking check in and other important information.
18:24
These are custom assets.
18:26
We have some campaigns going on here that Pavlos will talk about a little bit later.
18:32
We have dynamic fares also important and some interlinking modules.
18:38
As I mentioned, we still have the page templates, the standard page templates that airTRFXs outputs automatically to city from city and so on.
18:50
So here you can see this is familiar airTRFXs page with all the rich content, especially here, the location content that was added to the pages and let’s go.
19:05
What’s very unique about this, it’s when we actually look in the header menu, you have all of these different sections.
19:12
Let’s go, for example, to flight information.
19:15
This is an airTRFX’s custom page.
19:17
So you have flight schedules here, right?
19:23
And let’s take another look.
19:26
Plan your trip.
19:27
Hold on, this is the flight schedule.
19:29
So let’s take a look from Linaca to Athens.
19:33
We searched the flights we get here, the flight schedule for this route, so very exciting.
19:40
What Cypress built here with the help of AirTRFX’s custom pages.
19:44
Just to go into some others, baggage information that I mentioned earlier, the standard content about what’s allowed, what’s not allowed that you’re all familiar with.
19:57
And yeah, let me see, maybe we can go into one more.
20:04
Time allows upgrade to business class.
20:06
This is also very pretty page with all the information pertaining to business class upgrade and the service included and so on.
20:18
All right, oh, I, I have one more on my mind and that is this one.
20:26
So this is also custom page where Cyprus builds a road map where they’re showcasing the route network that they service.
20:38
OK, so the real value here is that yeah, go ahead.
20:44
If I may add, it’s just something that just came in today.
20:47
For example, now that you’re on the home page due to all the analytics that are provided by PROS, this is something good that if you guys scroll a bit down on where the actually the all the all the flights are here exactly all the popular destinations.
21:03
We’ve got some results here today that the majority people visiting on the website, this amounts to more than 75% stay on this specific toolbar and majority of sales are generated from this.
21:17
And so we’re going to think into moving debate up in the on the page.
21:22
But what I’m trying to say is here that people need to move away from, you know, trying to think that website.
21:28
We need to focus more on coloring and doing everything stuff people you want to get that customer turned into a sale.
21:36
So here gives them full visibility.
21:39
Great guys.
21:39
Let’s let’s also fly to Paris for that price and that price actually gives you a ticket.
21:46
So that actually that was a customer then that they need.
21:49
So yes, you were doing that through airTRFXs, but why not have it on your basically homepage?
21:55
And that was our idea months ago and we gave it to you, and you made it into a possibility.
22:00
So since we have airTRFX, since that’s what customers actually won at the end of the day, getting an actual price and not some promotionals that, yeah, fly from May to Euro some way.
22:11
And if you have that directly on this or let’s put that on the homepage and let’s bring all that traffic that comes to our website into a sale.
22:19
So just trying to say the importance of this, how important it is.
22:24
I agree.
22:25
And the real value here is that offer and price and the booking are behave like 1 product.
22:31
It’s not like 3 disjointed systems, right?
22:34
So also your commercial teams have a lot of flexibility when it comes to launching campaigns across the website infrastructure because you do it as a single motion.
22:42
You don’t have to orchestrate 3 vendors and three road maps to ship just a single idea, right?
22:49
It gives you real commercial control.
22:51
And another benefit of the setup is that the airline has one service point end to end.
22:56
So no matter what the issue is or where in part in which part of the user journey the issue is, Cyprus always reaches out to our pros customer support team and we take it from there.
23:10
Yeah, you might have an idea that the whole thing is to have a good partnership and basically turn our idea into a possibility.
23:18
So we might for us, OK, it’s only been six months that we’d be using this and later on what’s happening.
23:25
But the thing is that something new we might come up with.
23:28
And the thing is to have the flexibility and we saw that it can be done to add something extra while going on.
23:36
Exactly.
23:37
So I think it’s valuable that you have a partner that is able to take some noise away from you, so you don’t have to juggle and the communication stays direct.
23:48
Now you touched a little bit on a more future during perspective.
23:50
And I also want to mention that within the traffic subscription is also our product updates included, right?
23:57
So based on SEO insights and expertise that we have in house and now also our SEO team specializes on AI search optimization.
24:06
So what our road map will output will all include AI search insights.
24:12
And that’s also a valuable piece why you’re so very well situated because you’re your core website now includes all of these updates.
24:22
OK, back to you Emily.
24:27
All right.
24:27
So first of all, Desi, thank you so much for walking us through the Cyprus Airways digital experience.
24:32
Thank you very much.
24:33
That was fantastic to see really what we are talking about here.
24:38
I think that maybe Pavlos we can come back, you know with more questions about your to discuss a little bit more about your business goal that drove this confirmation, your strategy, priorities behind the scene.
24:53
And also maybe you can tell us a little bit more about how Cyprus Airways reinvented the customer journey around demand and customer intent.
25:07
OK, I’ve, I’ve mentioned it a bit earlier, but you know, again, our, our main goal always is the goal, you know, moving away from OTAs and you know, other people’s getting, getting our sales.
25:22
We want to have control.
25:23
We want to drive direct sales.
25:26
So as I said, the better customer experience, faster campaign activation, improve the SEO visibility that you’ll see later on, stronger digital revenue performance as you see in the results.
25:39
I mean, we wanted the website to become more than any informational channel.
25:43
You know, it’s, it’s clear that that’s how it’s been going up today when it’s, it’s time to change.
25:49
So the objective was to like to create the, the true retail environment.
25:54
We also shifted, I mean from the home page first thinking, as I said, you know, too often see what the customer needs.
26:03
So instead of sending every customer through the same path, I mean, we created a more targeted entry points, let’s say, you know, through the landing pages and everything more.
26:16
Most importantly, OK, this transformation was about building the foundation for modern airline retail today.
26:26
I mean Cyprus Airways has a much more agile and connected digital environment, let’s say that basically supports the future capabilities and where it can go such as we’re looking into more personalization, more dynamic offers to the passenger, more demand driven customer experiences overall.
26:49
So the website for us, I mean it’s no longer just a transactional platform, that’s clear.
26:57
It’s become now for the past six months become part of the broader radio ecosystem.
27:07
It’s, it’s sort of #1 now retail channel, let’s say so and continuous commercial optimization and future innovation.
27:18
It’s only, I told you 6 months have been doing this.
27:21
But this is the, this is the road.
27:22
So even next year we’re happy to jumping on a webinar and tell you and you see where we at by next year.
27:32
Thanks Pavlos, thank you so much.
27:33
You mentioned modern retailing.
27:35
I think that it’s a topic that you know in the industry, we are all on it right now.
27:40
So thank you so much for mentioning that.
27:42
It’s true that we what you currently have, yes, you build the foundation for you to go beyond that and the next step.
27:49
Thank you for mentioning that.
27:50
I think it’s important for you know the audience to know that.
27:56
But maybe Desiree as we are talking about capabilities, if you can tell us a little bit more about the capability that is enabled for is required for this transformation please.
28:14
Sure.
28:14
So I think for me it really comes down to four things that combined together turn the website into this real revenue engine.
28:23
So the first one is scale.
28:25
AirTRFXs creates a bookable and search optimized page for every route automatically as you all know, so you don’t at a time.
28:33
Then second, we have live fairs as content.
28:35
As I already mentioned, all prices are pulled in real time and shown directly on the page, so what the customer sees is accurate and carries through up to the booking.
28:45
Then thirdly, and that’s a big one, the data is structured and rendered in a way machines can actually read it.
28:52
That’s not always a given nowadays.
28:55
So it’s not just built for people, but Googling and I can read it as well, which can’t be said as I mentioned about traditional website solutions, but airTRFX does certainly do both.
29:06
It’s built for both.
29:09
And then the fourth point is self-service.
29:13
Pavlos talked about it, I mentioned it.
29:14
We talked about how the commercial teams can launch and adjust everything themselves just using templates and modules and there’s no development cycle.
29:21
So that agility is worth a lot and because Cyprus runs our system as their core site, that flexibility applies across the entire experience for them.
29:31
All this put together, that’s what really enabled the transformation in my opinion.
29:35
Thank you Desiree for your input here.
29:39
How does airTRFX support dynamic landing page and real time offers as well?
29:47
So the short answer is the page is dynamic because it’s built from templates and modules and the offer is dynamic because it’s powered by live data.
29:55
So nothing is static and nothing needs to be managed manually, which saves you a lot of time.
29:59
And on top of that, you can show different types of fares depending on the intent, one way round trip promotion, sales, different travel classes, cash versus loyalty, branded fares and you know the list goes on.
30:14
And you can even schedule campaigns to turn on and off automatically.
30:17
So this makes it a really dynamic solution.
30:19
All in all, thanks, Desiree, Pavlos.
30:24
What became possible operationally that wasn’t before.
30:31
OK, so the biggest operational change again, again, my lovely word agility.
30:39
So our CRM marketing and commercial teams basically can now as I said move much faster when when launching campaigns, landing pages, promotional activities.
30:51
This has reduced dependency on IT and for many content related tasks that came along so this allows us, you know, to the business to react more quickly to market opportunities.
31:07
As I said, customer demand has also improved the collaboration across our across our CRM department commercial because the entire customer journey now is more connected and under one place, one umbrella.
31:23
So from discovery and inspiration through directly to booking.
31:27
So, so Pavlos, you just mentioned greater agility across CRM, marketing, commercial and IT teams with the ability to launch campaign and landing page much faster and response in real time.
31:43
And Pavlos, I would like to ask you if you can show us a live example on how he works in practice today, because I think he would be great for the audience as well to see how Cyprus CI was.
31:58
You know, he’s bringing this together campaign dynamic landing pages, real time offers to create of course, more connected and demand driving customer journey.
32:08
So can you do that for us?
32:09
Yeah, absolutely.
32:12
So let me share my screen.
32:20
You can see my screen.
32:21
Yeah, yes, yes.
32:23
So this is a good example of how we can launch and manage campaigns much more quickly than before.
32:30
So just the past week we’ve got we’ve it’s going to be all over in the media and everything.
32:37
So we signed a big, big agreement with Andrea Pierlow.
32:41
He’s the new ambassador of Cyprus Airways, a well known legend in in the football, in the football world.
32:50
So basically a brand new campaign went out.
32:54
We have agreements on specific on specific routes.
33:00
So routes that he’ll be advertising, sponsoring directly, special discounts on those routes.
33:09
So automatically the routes that he’s going to be advertising and everything will be directly here.
33:16
So the Dubai and Paris and Italy, basically the two places that Pirlo is stated is stated in Dubai and has connections OK, with Italy and Paris at the moment.
33:31
So these routes are going to be directly pushed.
33:35
So basically automatically here behind the scenes, we have a massive, you know, analytics on what’s going on on these routes.
33:44
And he’s going to help us as an ambassador, you know, to, to more push this campaign safety.
33:51
So what you have that’s seeing is actually it’s a dedicated landing page built around a specific campaign where customers can immediately access the relevant contents.
34:01
As I said, so previously, creating and launching something like this, which have required much more coordination, technical involvement today, I mean, today the process is significantly more Hutcher.
34:14
So following allowing us to basically react faster to the market opportunities.
34:19
And you would have created that landing page before put specific prices, you’ve got the prices directly there.
34:25
So there’s a lot of good things about all this.
34:31
I must say.
34:33
Thank you Pavlos for showing us this example. This is fantastic. Thank you again.
34:39
I have another question for you if I may.
34:41
So why was it important to connect home page, landing page pricing and booking into one journey, what it was important for, for you and Cyprus Airways?
34:54
So basically customers should not experience the website as a collection of disconnected pages like it was before.
35:05
So if a customer arrives from a Google campaign or a special offer, they should quickly understand the destination, see the relevant pricing, availability and move into a booking without unnecessary friction.
35:21
So connecting all these elements creates a more seamless journey for us, OK, and for the customer, while making the website more commercially efficient and easier for customers to use.
35:34
At the end of the day, isn’t that what we all want to be, as simple as possible?
35:39
I’ve seen website, airline websites, a lot of information, a lot of things you try and find.
35:45
You just want to get a the reason.. you’ve landed on the website of an airline not to read the news, it’s actually to book a ticket.
35:53
So make them home from the first page when they land there drive that into a sale unless if they don’t, if we don’t want sales and we’re looking for an information on website.
36:07
Thanks Pavlos.
36:08
Thank you so much Desi.
36:10
Let’s come back to a notion that you talked before that is SEO, because I would like to ask you the questions and better the old, you know, to understand better how are SEO, GO and AO changing the acquisition strategy today?
36:29
Sure, yeah, Thanks Emily.
36:30
That’s an interesting question very much at the core of what airlines care about right now and what’s going on in the travel search market, right.
36:43
So to be honest, I SEO and SEM remain the core channels. That’s not changing for now.
36:50
AI search doesn’t replace them, it actually sits alongside them, if that makes sense.
36:56
So today this share is still small but it’s growing fast.
37:01
So what we know is that users have a high booking intent already at the time of search.
37:09
So that alone makes it worth preparing for early, right?
37:13
So my key point is you don’t need a separate strategy since good SEO already makes you eligible for AI search, citation and linking because AI actually pulls from rank structured content.
37:26
Then the gap today is actually that airlines are often mentioned but not linked to the results.
37:32
That’s the real problem and we need to close that gap.
37:35
And to be able to do that you have to have machine readable and data rich pages.
37:40
This includes dynamic fare already mentioned, but also other information closely linked to flights like routes, schedules, duration, connections and so on.
37:50
So in fact, parts of the airTRFX’s road map for the rest of the year cover exactly that.
37:54
We’ll be releasing several features like a quick facts widgets widget, an FAQ module, booking insights, and additional visual tools to support rich content by showing which flights are non-stop, seasonal and so on.
38:08
So there’s a lot coming and I’m very excited about these new features that will help you increase AI search visibility.
38:17
Going back to your initial question, so there’s no change in strategy right now.
38:21
It’s all about making sure your existing foundation extends into AI as well.
38:26
So the value comes back to your site and you know, we have experts at pros and they’re ready to help you with it.
38:33
Thanks, Desi.
38:34
And how quickly can campaign or be launched?
38:39
No, honestly, I think everyone in this room can already launch a campaign in ours.
38:43
If you use airTRFXs, that’s what airTRFXs does.
38:46
And so let me talk about what Cyprus did differently because it changes what launching a campaign actually means.
38:55
So for most airlines, airTRFX powers the campaigns and the landing pages, but those sit more as an appendix to a separate core website all together on a different CMS.
39:06
So campaigns move fast, but the site itself doesn’t keep up always.
39:12
The landing pages are agile, the rest of the journey isn’t because of that, now that Cyprus made airTRFX their core site CMS, the homepage, the destination pages, the route pages, the campaign pages, it’s all one system flowing straight into the PROS booking experience as you saw in the architecture slide that I showed previously.
39:33
So a launch isn’t a micro site off to the side, they reshape the entire journey in one motion.
39:38
They refresh their homepage, stand up at destination hub, reprice a route and launch the promo.
39:44
All consistent and all live with no second vendor or IT cycle.
39:49
So the real story isn’t the campaign in ours really, it’s the whole site moving at the campaign speed.
39:55
And because every page runs for the same engine, every page is server side rendered and AI ready.
40:01
So a campaign lands in a journey that’s already discoverable end to end and not just one landing page, right?
40:09
Sure.
40:10
No, absolutely thanks Desi.
40:14
Now that we have you know talk about all of this and the resident transformation, Pavlos, I think that I would like to ask you a question if you can share with us the business result that you have seen and of course if you can explain if the transformation delivered measurables commercial impact weekly, I think that’s something that I would like to ask you.
40:40
Sure.
40:43
So the results were visible very quickly.
40:46
Do you want me to share some slides or is as does he show you want you want me to share?
40:51
Yeah, let me quickly hold on.
40:54
Here we go.
40:57
Thank you.
40:57
We can see it now.
41:00
So people will see this and say wow, you know, but I mean the results were visible very, very, very quickly.
41:08
I mean we saw the web bookings share increase, we saw the web revenue share increase.
41:20
You know, we saw the percentage of digital revenue growth sessions increase.
41:26
And most importantly that basically shocked me was the direct traffic increase.
41:32
That was the majority, you know that because the increase in direct traffic alone is a strong indicator, but of increased our brand engagement and direct custom interaction with the Cyprus service website.
41:48
Of course airline of course you’re going to say airline performance is influenced by many factors and we have done a lot behind the scenes commercial teams, not only just the website, so many factors including commercial activity, revenue management, network planning and the all the market conditions.
42:07
However, the results clearly demonstrated that the new digital ecosystem that we adopted had strengthened the direct engagement and improved the monetization, let’s say, and enhance the overall customer journey.
42:25
So that that was our goal and that was clearly happy to see the results of that.
42:33
So Pavlos, what surprised you the most after the launch?
42:39
Listen, we went live. I will never forget it, you know, just a week before Christmas holidays, people will say, oh, let’s not do that before the holidays, let’s not do something.
42:50
You know, we went against what classic people and classic companies do.
43:01
So we did it in the holidays.
43:03
We wanted that big boost of traffic coming and it actually paid off.
43:08
So what surprised me the most was the speed of impact with most digital projects.
43:14
You know, as I said, you expect that option and result to build gradually over time.
43:19
You’ve got some months of hiccups, some months of errors.
43:22
You know Touchwood, we didn’t have anything for the past six months as smoothly as possible.
43:27
So we started seeing positive indicators very quickly after launch.
43:35
Yes, it was a Christmas period of traffic came in.
43:38
We had the traffics before, but imagine all this traffic now combined into one and everything coming on our home.
43:44
So the growth, indirect traffic, customer engagement, digital revenue confirm that customers were responding positively, you know, to the new experience and increasingly choosing to interact directly with Cypress Airways and not going to classic OTA websites and getting prices so they could find more relatively information on our homepage.
44:09
So for us that was a strong validation of the hard work and combined effort between two companies and validating that the strategy was moving in the right direction.
44:22
So and supporting our broader objective, I mean growing, growing the direct channel because that from the very beginning has always been our objective to grow the direct channel.
44:35
Yes, Pavlos.
44:36
And how did internal shareholders reacts as well?
44:42
Was it the same positive?
44:46
So yeah, I mean internal stakeholders, what do they want to see?
44:51
Increased numbers, decreased sales, good exposure of the brand and the reaction was very positive, you know, because the benefits were practical and visible across the whole business.
45:03
So a commercial CRM and marketing teams, you know, as I said, great flexibility, we’re able to move faster and launching campaigns etcetera, etcetera.
45:14
Market opportunities from an IT perspective, we, we gain let’s say a more scalable and manageable digital environment management could also, I mean, OK, they could also clearly see measurable improvements in direct channel performance and customer engagement.
45:33
But overall it became clear that this was much more than a website redesign.
45:42
They were thinking as a website example.
45:43
It was much more was an important step in strengthening Cyprus Airways digital footprint capabilities and supporting our objectives.
45:56
So far so good at all.
45:57
The six months down the road looks promising, even with all the hiccups, you know, in in the region and everything.
46:04
And the aviation is again being hit once more.
46:08
Even this came I think at a very good time and it’s helping us keep steady towards the future.
46:18
Pavlos, thank you so much first for discussing your transformation journey weavers and older evolution toward for more demand leader retail approach and the foundation Cyprus Airways has built for future digital innovation.
46:35
To close today’s conversation, I would like to shift the focus for the key listen learns along the way and also the future outlook for airline embarking on a similar transformation journey.
46:50
So Pavlos, based on your experience and to wrap up our conversation today, what advice would you give to airlines that wants to start a similar journey?
47:05
OK, So my advice, you know, I said at the beginning is, you know, do not treat this as a simple website project redesign.
47:17
Companies might spend thousands and months of funds and resources trying to invent everything and see how we’re going to bring direct traffic to our sales, how we’re going to get more sales.
47:33
Success requires an alignment between your IT teams, commercial CRM, marketing, revenue management and as we all know, technology is an important enabler.
47:47
We’ve got AI in everything these days, but it will not deliver results on it’s own.
47:53
So if the organization is not aligned around the customer journey and commercial objectives, then then you know, it’s operating.
48:04
So I would also encourage airlines to focus on agility, the ability to launch campaigns quicker, optimized content, and react to changing customer demand.
48:16
It’s becoming increasingly important.
48:20
There’s, there’s bigger airlines around there and, and us being a small airline, you know, we want a footprint there.
48:29
So basically, we’re working even harder to make and bring more results.
48:34
So for Cyprus Airways, this project completely reinforced the importance of having technology, commercial teams and digital execution working together.
48:46
I mean, when those areas aligned, the website became much more of a booking channel it became a strategic asset for us that suppose direct sales growth and customer experience and the future innovation.
49:01
So ultimately, I’d like to say the objective is not just to improve the website, but create a stronger digital foundation that you know supports CN line long, long term growth.
49:17
That’s only the just my advice to me.
49:24
Thank you Pavlos and thank you as well Desi for the great discussion that we had today.
49:31
You have shared, you know, valuable insight and as well a real life example.
49:37
So thank you so much for that.
49:39
We hope that the conversation gives everyone a valuable perspective on how modern retailing can connect customer intent, dynamic comfort, and commercial performance for better customer experience.
49:53
And with that, I would like to open the floor for questions from the audience.
49:58
So we have a chat you can see where you can post your questions and we are going, you know, to answer them.
50:07
There we can see that we already have some questions from the audience.
50:13
So let me read it.
50:15
So feel free to type more questions if you want to.
50:20
So the first question is for you, Desi Ray, you mentioned the airTRFX road map for features that will increase AI search visibility.
50:28
How can we learn more about the details and timeline for those features?
50:34
And also will they be included in the airTRFX subscription or are there premium features?
50:42
Wow, that’s a lot of questions in one, but very interesting and obviously importance to know timelines around road map features.
50:54
So in terms of what will be available, I mentioned a little bit previously during our conversation that there will be a quick fax widget that was focused on structured data.
51:05
So that includes flight time, distance, schedule, connections, aircraft type, airports, terminals, all of these types of information, pieces of information that will help increase AI search visibility, FAQ modules that will also have rich flight and destination info, booking insights.
51:27
That’s an interesting one because it will showcase to search engines and to users the cheapest months to book, best days of the week to book and best booking window, everything around that.
51:41
But that’s just high level.
51:42
And then we’ll also have DPA visual tags that will allow you to display if the route is non-stop or connecting or seasonal and so on based on different tags that will be part of the visual on the card of the DPA.
51:59
And there’s other features as well.
52:00
I’m not going to go into detail.
52:02
So the road map is pretty full, the output has already started and between now and the end of the year and most of these features will go live.
52:12
And then in terms of the last part of the question, is it including a subscription or are those premium features?
52:20
So they will be premium features, but they will be, if you want to step it up another level, right, there will be standard features that will be very essential for AI search visibility and everybody will have access to it.
52:36
Now there’s then another category of premium features that won’t be you know, they will be very engaging and a lot richer, but they won’t be part of the baseline for you to be have visibility in the eye search, right.
52:54
So there will be a distinction.
52:55
And if you want to learn more about that, we can have a separate session about that.
53:03
I think that should answer the question.
53:06
Thank you, Desi.
53:07
So I think the second question that we have is about the same thing.
53:12
So I think you have addressed it that unless you want to add anything else, but I think we can move to the another one.
53:17
Let me check.
53:20
OK, question.
53:22
Yes, the question is how to start demand lead retail transformation Pavlos, do you want to take that one?
53:33
We talked about yeah, how to do it, how to start.
53:39
Yeah, yes, I think we covered that through your question.
53:43
So it came in early.
53:44
So maybe that was that was posted when before we started talking about it.
53:49
Yeah.
53:52
Any other questions we just had, you know those two feel free to type any anymore.
54:04
No, there is no so that’s good.
54:07
Sometimes, you know, and not having a lot of questions that’s we’ve opened up there and there’s a lot there’s a lot of info shared today.
54:18
So, yes, absolutely.
54:20
So if there is no more questions.
54:22
So first of all, I want to say thank you very much for attending our webinar today.
54:28
We’re going to have a recording that can be sent to all of you.
54:32
We will make sure that if you want to have the recording, you will have access to it.
54:37
And of course, if you have any questions in letter today or in the future, feel free to let us know.
54:43
Happy to answer them at a later stage, but thank you everyone and thank you Pavlo.
54:49
Thank you Desiree for joining me on this webinar.
54:54
Have a nice day everyone.
54:55
Thank you.
54:56
Thank you very much.
55:00
Bye bye.