Virgin Blue launches passenger initiative

Virgin Blue has launched another initiative for travellers who book their flights online – Dynamic Currency Conversion.  This service allows travellers with foreign credit cards to choose to pay for their flights in their local currency at the time of making their booking, rather than letting their bank convert the purchase into their local currency on their monthly credit card statement.

Launched this week on the Virgin Blue website, Dynamic Currency Conversion is a sophisticated IT innovation.  It automatically recognises major foreign credit cards and displays the fare quote in the relevant foreign currency, converted in real time, to allow Guests the opportunity to purchase in their local currency.

The feature will be of particular benefit to international travelers, who can purchase Virgin Blue fares from anywhere in the world to travel on a network spanning 22 Australian and 8 International destinations.

Virgin Blue General Manager, IT, Nick Brant said, “Anyone who has ever purchased goods or services priced in another currency will recognise the benefits of this initiative.”

“This has been a key project for our IT team and we have spent twelve months working closely with our partners Fexco, Navitaire and Dialect to help design and implement this exciting initiative.”

He continued, “Virgin Blue is the first carrier in the world to launch real time compliant dynamic currency conversion capability with Navitaire’s Open Skies reservations system.”

“This is another unique service we can offer Virgin Blue Guests as a result of our commitment to continue developing groundbreaking technology to the advantage of our Guests.”  This follows recent initiatives such as on-line check-in capabilities (check yourself in, choose your own seat and print your own boarding pass) and self check-in kiosks at all major ports.

More than 90% of Virgin Blue bookings are now made on-line, compared to approximately 15% when the airline first launched into Australian skies in August 2000, demonstrating the increasing trend towards internet bookings.

Nick Brant added, “Our Guests can see exactly what the exchange rate is and how much they are paying at the time of making their booking.  This means no nasty surprises for Virgin Blue flyers when they receive their monthly credit card statement.  It doesn’t get any more transparent than that.”