SA Airliners are behind in online strategy
Whereas fifteen years ago if you wanted to buy an airline ticket you'd phone up a travel agent, these days all it takes is to fill out a simple online form. In fact the sale of airline tickets has grown to such an extent that it dominates the South African e-commerce landscape, and is expected to continue dominating it for the next 5 to 10 years. However, e-commerce talents are not evenly spread across the various players in the airline industry. The bright-shining stars are Kulula.com and Travelstart, both of which have foreign interests - Kulula.com is partially owned by British Airways, and Travelstart is owned by a Swede.
Kulula.com
Kulula.com was the first South African consumer web site to reach R1-billion in online sales in a single year (2005) - it's no coincidence that even their name shows recognition of the importance of e-commerce (the only airline in South Africa which has a url in its name).
Travelstart
In late 2004, Stephen Ekbergh, a maverick Swedish entrepeneur, relocated with his family to the warmer climate of Cape Town. Ekbergh was the founder of Travelstart and on moving to the mother city he started a South African branded version of Travelstart. The South African version allows one to search for the cheapest flight amongst (inter alia) Kulula.com, 1time flights, Mango Airlines and SAA flights (after experiencing "severe problems with Nationwide", they decided to "turn Nationwide off from our systems"). In a stroke of genius, Ekbergh has convinced many South African website owners to promote Travelstart on their websites, by making the Travelstart search engine available to them through an affiliate marketing company, Traffic Synergy. The website owners receive a fixed fee (currently R80) for each airline ticket sold.
Affiliate marketing
Given the importance of the online industry for selling airline tickets, it is surprising that Travelstart is one of the few players (the only?) involved in the South African airline industry to have unleashed the power of affiliate marketing. Foreign airlines like KLM, British Airways, Air France, Virgin Atlantic and Singapore Airlines all use affiliate marketing to boost sales - the future is already here, it's just not evenly spread out. The South African carriers would do well to simply copy their overseas competitors' online strategies.
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