Annual Airline Book 2003 - The Helping Hand
September 2003
With limited time available, selling duty-free inflight may not always be a priority for cabin crews. Help is at hand, however, in the form of point-of-sale systems. Jonathan Brown talks to airlines and suppliers about how technology can help make the selling process easier and more efficient - provided retailers are willing to invest.
Airlines
are often accused of neglecting inflight duty-free sales. Some airlines
are certainly not capitalising on this particular revenue stream as
much as they could. But with a captive market and the ability to offer
excellent bargains on many flights, the effort is often worthwhile.
You could be forgiven for thinking that inflight crews have enough to
deal with, what with serving meals, fetching glasses of water and
dealing with truculent infants. Duty-free some argue, is just one more
problem they could do without. Processing transactions in different
currencies or other means of payment takes valuable time. And to that
then time spent explaining product details or special deals to
passengers, and it's easy to see how selling duty-free can be relegated
in the crew's long list of tasks.
Inflight technology suppliers believe their systems can greatly reduce the hassle experienced by airline crews, making the selling process swifter and more efficient leading to a better onboard shop- ping experience for the passenger and higher sales for the airline. But what do the airlines themselves think? Automated point-of-sale technology is seen as an essential part of the inflight sales system, but it seems some airlines find it difficult to commit the expenditure required to keep their systems up to date. At Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS), flightshop director Richard Nisell explains that the airline's point-of-sale technology is in urgent need of updating. SAS uses a system developed by Danish company DataFlight Europe, which while it handles the basics well cannot provide the services offered by more technologically advanced models "The system has now been in, use for eight or nine years" says Nisell. "Any system that is eight years old is clearly out of data, so in the autumn we will be looking at new systems". But It is here that financial restraints come into play. "We will either go for a completely new system or for one similar to that we already have. It all depends on the cost" adds Nisell. "The software we have now is adequate for the job. When we bought the machines they cost about $3,500 each, so our next choice depends on what is on offer today. If it is cheaper to buy machine and software together we'll look at it. We can't just continue with DataFlight though, because its systems may now be more expensive than others on offer. New applications may also be on the market [which do the job better]."
Nisell explains that the costing for the system is broken down over five years to minimise the impact on the annual bottom line. This means any system is going to need a shelf-life of at least that long. But the whole process is like buying a car - you don't want to buy a new one as soon as you've paid for the old one Consequently, new systems are expected to last longer than five years so it is by no means unusual to find eight years between new systems. And you only have to look at how technology has come on in leaps and bounds during the last decade to see how keeping up with the latest developments requires continual investment.
