Finnair and Maersk Air Launch Calendar-led Websites

Madrid, 13 July 2005: Finnair and Maersk Air have launched innovative calendar-led solutions on their websites, www.finnair.com and www.maersk-air.com, powered by Amadeus’ e-Travel Flex Pricer. Both airlines will now display a comprehensive choice of best fares, fare conditions, times, and extended date ranges on a single page. This increases convenience for travellers making their bookings online by offering them greater choice and visibility of available options, while improving profitability for the airline.

Flex Pricer is one of the most widely adopted online merchandising solution for airlines, enabling them to enhance loyalty levels and increase their yield.

A recent survey conducted by Amadeus e-Travel among 85 executives from 35 airlines highlighted the calendar display as the most important conversion factor on a website (90%) before other elements such as special offers (76%) and lowest fares (71%).

“Addressing the ever-challenging and diverse needs of Finnish and international customers, we have always looked for the best and most sustainable e-commerce technologies to also meet our profitability objectives,” said Tom Källström, Vice President e-Business at Finnair. “For this reason, we fully outsourced our self-service solution including the e-commerce engine, merchandising capabilities, and a personalised user interface to Amadeus e-Travel. As important as the technology itself, is the impressive expertise brought by their dedicated e-commerce support team.”

Maersk Air Sales and Marketing Director, Anne von Glasow, added, “Our website improvements provide our customers with a complete overview of all fares within +/- 7 days and covering all departures. We believe that Maersk Air’s new website is one of the most advanced IATA member airline corporate websites in Europe, utilising state-of-the-art technology from Amadeus e-Travel. They have enabled us to be the preferred airlines for our customers and reinforce our “Fly as you like” concept to boost conversion and loyalty levels.”

“Amadeus e-Travel continues to support our customers’ e-business needs by investing and developing truly innovative solutions such as Amadeus e-Travel Flex Pricer,” said Jérôme Destors, Commercial Director Amadeus e-Travel. “Whether our customers want an off-the-shelf merchandising solution, up and running in just a few weeks or a fully tailored solution, we enable their e-business growth with best-in-class reliability levels.”

Ten airlines currently use Flex Pricer, and are part of a group of more than sixty airlines worldwide that have outsourced their over 100 websites (domestic and international) to Amadeus e-Travel.

Notes to the editors:

About e-Travel Flex Pricer
Flex Pricer is Amadeus e-Travel’s merchandising solution for airlines. Flex Pricer empowers online end-users to create their own travel journeys by combining one-way flights mixing various classes with fares rules. This solution enables end-users to quickly find what they are looking for: best price with maximum flexibility. As a result, airlines can significantly increase their online loyalty rates, and improve their e-commerce yield.

Finnair
Finnair, the national carrier of Finland and one of the world’s longest established airlines, has a route network that covers over 50 international destinations and 16 destinations within Finland. The airline also owns 95 per cent of the Amadeus national marketing company (NMC), which is the local distributor of the its products and services to the travel agency community in the Finnish market. www.finnair.com

Maersk Air
Maersk Air is Denmark’s leading privately owned airline and is engaged in international scheduled services, charter flights, leasing of aircraft and freight agency activities. With 33 aircraft running nearly 40 routes, Maersk Air employs 1,200 dedicated staff in Denmark and abroad. Maersk Air is part of the global company, the A.P. Moller – Maersk Group.

Currently, Maersk Air offers a new price concept “fly as you like”, where the customer experiences greater flexibility and has more influence on their trip, and can choose from a selection of low prices to legroom space. www.maersk-air.com

Amadeus e-Travel
Amadeus e-Travel is the e-commerce business unit of Amadeus, a global leader in technology and distribution solutions for the travel and tourism industry. It provides e-commerce solutions to airlines, corporations, travel agencies and other online travel businesses, and is dedicated to its customers net success. Amadeus e-Travel serves customers in 90 countries including corporations such as Airbus, DaimlerChrysler and Oracle Corporation, airlines and travel suppliers such as Air France, Iberia and Qantas, and online agencies such as Opodo. For further information, please visit our Web site at www.e-travel.com.

Contact details:
Corporate & Marketing Communication
Amadeus
Tel: +34 91 582 0160
Fax: +34 91 582 0188
E-mail: [email protected]