Serko introduces enhancements to unused ticket credit capabilities in Zeno
With the advent of COVID-19 in early 2020, we saw a raft of flight changes and cancellations as the travel industry took a hit. IATA estimated that airlines owed $35b worth of ticket refunds in the second quarter of 2020 alone. As the pandemic wore on, many airlines extended the expiration dates for unused ticket credits for a further year.
Now, two years on, unused flight credits can amount to millions of dollars for large organisations. For smaller businesses too, recouping these costs can be a headache, with many credits set to expire this year.
With the growing focus on cost control as businesses seek to maximize the efficiency of their travel programs, smart credit management is key to delivering a leaner travel program. The challenge is to stay on top of flight credits still owing and to ensure they are applied to new bookings before they expire.
Zeno makes it easy to stay on top of unused ticket credits
To make it even easier to keep track of flight credits, Serko has released enhancements to the way unused ticket credits can be viewed and managed in Zeno for customers in Australia and New Zealand*.
The new enhancements include a widget on the Zeno dashboard that gives travel bookers upfront visibility of their unused ticket credits and flags the priority of each credit as high, medium or low based on the expiry date. The widget displays at a high-level the five most urgent credits, and users can click into the app for an overview of all available credits.
During the booking flow, Zeno will automatically apply the most logical ticket credit to the booking based on the expiry date, the carrier and fare selected, and, if different GDS carriers are selected for outbound and return flights, Zeno will apply different credits (if available) to each booking. This gives travel managers peace of mind that their travelers are being encouraged to use available credits that may have otherwise been forgotten about, helping to reduce the risk of lost fares.
By providing high visibility of their unused ticket credits, Zeno enables travel bookers to book online with confidence that their available credits are being utilized**, reducing the need to call their travel management company, and thereby driving down booking costs.
Come back leaner with Zeno
As your employees start traveling and doing business in person again, Zeno is here to support you in optimising your organisation’s travel spend and empowering you to get the most out of your travel program.
* The unused ticket widget and app is already available to customers in other regions.
** Available credits will be used when a travel booker books fares with the same carrier as the carrier with whom the available credit is held.
