Expert Interview with Mario Gavira
Mario Gavira is the Vice President of Growth at Kiwi.com, and as a speaker for Digital Travel EU 2022 he shared his top priorities for 2022 and new challenges following the heightened demand and surge of bookings in the first half of the year.
What are your top 3 areas of focus in 2022 and why?
- Enhancing the customer journey: Offering the customer more options to self-service any type of travel needs in a digital environment. We are well positioned to capture the digital generation through perfecting a streamlined digital experience via Kiwi.com’s app
- Providing the most relevant content for our customers: We already cover around 95% flight content in the world, but we want to keep improving how we bring the most relevant flight combinations to our customers, be it price, flight time, schedule times etc Investing in
- Product Innovation: We are developing new services that will provide our customers more flexibility, in areas like insurance products, ancillary services and payment facilities.
What new challenge/s is your company facing as a result of the heightened demand and surge of bookings in the first half of 2022?
Our massive growth in flight bookings this year combined with the wide spread disruptions in the airline industry this summer, forced us to double down in our customer service efforts to ensure that our clients have a, as frictionless as possible, travel experience. Thanks to the learnings from 2 years of Covid disruptions and the improvements we instigated to address the issues identified from the biggest ‘stress test’ of all time on our services we are now better able to support our customers in these times.
What are the key post-pandemic customer behaviour trends to factor into your digital strategy?
Key behaviors we see is a demand for a much higher flexibility, not only in terms of modification and cancellation conditions, but also in terms of more flexible choices of travel destinations. Our super flexible flight search engine is perfectly suited for these type of new travelers.
What does an ideal omni-channel customer-centric digital experience look like?
An experience where the customer will receive a personalized and frictionless experience across all touchpoints of his customer journey and across all possible platforms, be it Kiwi.com’s app, the website, via chatbot or on the phone.
What are you most looking forward to at Digital Travel in November?
Connecting with peers from the industry and having fruitful exchanges about shared challenges and opportunities.
You can hear directly from Mario in his sessions at Digital Travel:
KEYNOTE PANEL: Future Proofing Your Business: How Can We Rebuild the Travel Industry Post Covid to Best Respond to New Customer Preferences and Boost Resilience Against Market Volatility?
Panellists:
- Mario Gavira, Vice President of Growth, Kiwi.com
- Tiddo Veldhuis, VP Offer Management & Ancillaries, Air France-KLM
- Chris Carmichael, Head of Corporate Innovation, TUI Musement
- Justin Reid, Director of Media, Destinations, Hotels & Growth, Tripadvisor
CRYSTAL BALL PANEL: Which Are the Cutting-Edge Automation Technologies That You Should Invest in To Meet Future Customer Needs?
Panellists:
- Mario Gavira, Vice President of Growth, Kiwi.com
- Lucia Rubio Zornoza, Head of Digital & Customer Experience, Europe & Americas, Iberostar
- David Ruíz Martinez, Customer Experience Director, SNCF Connect
- Peter Davis, Head of eCommerce, easyHotel
To find out more view the full agenda here