Introducing Caravelo: Unlocking the power of Passenger Engagement

We are proud to back Caravelo, the platform that is unlocking the power of passenger engagement in the post-pandemic travelscape. 

Founded by  Iñaki Uriz (CEO) and José Luis Vilar (COO) in Barcelona and now 45 people strong, Caravelo is also backed by key leaders in the airline industry. Most notably, Alex Cruz, former CEO of Vueling and British Airways, who recently joined Caravelo as an investor and advisor alongside Steven Greenway, Barbara Cassani, and Javier Perez-Tenessa, all travel industry experts.

The opportunity: a once-in-a-lifetime $767bn market reset

Airlines have always faced intense competition with mounting pressure on margins. Making sure they sell the right seat to the right passenger for the right price is a continual balancing act, with prices, demand, and capacity fluctuating constantly. Historically, this has led Airlines to engage in a transactional relationship with travelers.

As global air travel resumes, Airlines are waking up to the reality that they need to evolve into more effective travel retailers to manage the ongoing complexity of modern travel and retain passengers. However, the industry struggles to attract the technical talent and resources needed to build better traveler experience.

The current way of doing things is not working. Much of the airline industry is still being held back by legacy software and old-school mindsets, creating bottlenecks for those looking to upgrade their offerings and operations. The industry is not seen as particularly innovative and this degrades the traveler experience.

• Customer service has become a cost center, unscalable, and frustrating to both travelers and airlines. 
• Post-booking passenger engagement is unoptimised, meaning that revenues are unoptimised as Airlines are unable to personalise their offering.
• Finally, passenger retention is low. Existing efforts to retain customers focus on loyalty programs that don’t provide enough incentive for the customer.

Airline IT teams are stretched thin and sized for the job they have to do, without much spare capacity. Consequently, if they do decide to build solutions in-house, they either have to hire more people or do it very slowly. There is also the cost of maintaining the solution and keeping it running.

Enter Caravelo: Scalable tech infrastructure for airlines to boost customer loyalty and revenues

The subscription model is key to dealing with uncertainty and maximizing total revenue. Airlines that diversify their revenue streams and offer flexibility to customers will always be in an advantageous position. 

Caravelo is a SaaS platform that makes it easy for airlines to unlock this type of new revenue opportunity, and improve the passenger experience and retention thanks to three product lines:

• Subscriptions: Enables airlines and travel companies to offer subscription programs where the default behavior is retention. When passengers subscribe, they won’t search for a ticket every time they need to travel and will be loyal by default.
  
• Flight Revenue Optimization: Helps deliver customized offers to travelers that make their trip better, generating incremental revenue for airlines.
  
• Customer Service Automation: Improves customer service speeds, making it more scalable and reducing costs significantly.

The company has already partnered with 15 airlines and in 2021 has seen a surge in demand from airlines and online travel agencies (OTAs), particularly for its subscription solutions which create: 

1. Drastic reduction in passenger acquisition cost
2. Healthy, dependable recurring revenue
3. Hyper-loyalty and higher lifetime value
4. Resilient revenue streams despite market volatility

The Adara view: the time is now

From entertainment to food delivery, the subscription model is nothing new. However, Caravelo provides the technology infrastructure to implement the model successfully in an industry where companies are coming to terms with the fact that they must find new ways to lock in passenger loyalty and generate recurring revenue to support operations during difficult times. 

As international travel rebounds and convenience remains a top priority for consumers, we believe Caravelo is the leading partner for airlines to implement subscriptions around the world. We’re excited to be working with the team on this next stage of growth. 

Learn more about Caravelo: caravelo.com