Star Alliance has launched a Digital Services Platform (DSP) as a first step to an overall enhancement of digital and mobile services.
The platform was developed and implemented in conjunction with Accenture as part of the alliance’s strategy to further improve the customer journey.
The DSP can gather data provided by an individual member airline or third-party source and make it available to all members, enabling them to build it into their own customer-facing digital applications. In the long term, the DSP will allow customers to use any member airline’s website or mobile application to obtain all the information they need for travel on several Star Alliance member airlines.
“Most frequent travellers have a ‘home airline’ in our network and would prefer to control their entire travel experience through a single app or website,” said Jeffrey Goh, CEO, Star Alliance. “We are, therefore, working to create central capabilities that can be shared for use by our individual members.”
Once a service offer is available from the DSP, member airlines can decide individually if and when they make it available to customers. For example, a seat selection feature launched on 2 February now allows a customer of United Airlines to select a seat on a Singapore Airlines flight booked via United Airlines’ website or app.
As a result, a customer travelling on fare types that include complimentary advance seat selection can choose a specific seat at the time of reservation for the entire journey on United Airlines and Singapore Airlines, rather than only at the time of check-in. This feature will be made available across the alliance progressively.
Lufthansa is also using the DSP technology to provide baggage tracking information for its customers on journeys that include flights on other Star Alliance airlines. The data is provided by the Star Alliance Baggage Hub, which was launched at the end of 2016. It collects relevant baggage information from a wide-range of sources and makes it available to all member carriers included in a passenger’s itinerary.
