Building trust in car rental to drive airline ancillary revenue
In an interview with the World Aviation Festival, Meili co-founder Bobby Healy explains why trust, not technology, is what makes car rental work for airlines, and how AI agents could change direct booking.
Car rental has long been one of the ancillaries airlines are most cautious about. Travellers have learned to expect hard upselling and surprise charges at the desk, and many airlines have kept their distance as a result.
In this interview with the World Aviation Festival, Bobby Healy, co-founder of Meili, talks about how that is changing, and what airlines need to get right to turn car rental into a reliable source of ancillary revenue.
Trust is what removes the friction
Airlines often describe a good booking experience as fast, with as few clicks as possible. Bobby argues the real test is whether the traveller feels safe buying where they are.
Friction-free is not a technology thing. It's about the consumer feeling like they're in the right place.
Bobby Healy, Co-founder and CTO, Meili
That means travellers need confidence that they are getting a fair price through the airline and will not have a bad experience when they collect the car.
Familiar brands and a link to loyalty
Bobby points to SAS as an airline that has got the approach right. SAS offers car rental from brands its customers already know and trust, and ties it closely to its EuroBonus loyalty programme. Working with Meili, SAS has nearly doubled its car rental revenue, and car rental is now the benchmark for its other ancillary products. You can read more in the strategic role of car rental in ancillary growth.
AI agents and direct booking
Looking ahead, Bobby expects booking through AI agents to become the main way people book travel within ten years. He sees this as good news for airlines that sell direct, because the agents do the comparison work themselves and do not need an aggregator in the middle.
Questions covered in the interview
- How the trend for friction-free booking is changing traveller habits and expectations
- Why car rental has historically been overlooked as a source of ancillary revenue
- What business opportunities the Meili platform opens up
- How relationships with external brands can improve an airline's relationship with its customers
Talk to our experts
Want to know how this could work for your business? Connect with the people behind it.
