Written by Shane Burke, Director, Customer Success and Delivery at Datalex

As part of a strategy to increase their direct channel and online booking volumes, Edelweiss (WK) had a requirement to provide a superior online guest experience with an enhanced and market-leading UI. Central to this requirement was the inclusion of a sophisticated new flight search facility that would give almost instantaneous low-fare results for their entire network of routes and for up to twelve months in advance.

Learn more about how Datalex leveraged its Datalex Direct and Search Server products to deliver an innovative, customer-centric digital commerce solution for the Edelweiss direct channel.

Edelweiss | Facts and Figures

Edelweiss is Switzerland’s leading leisure travel airline and is based at Zurich Airport. As a sister company of Swiss International Air Lines and a member of the Lufthansa Group, Edelweiss flies to 72 dream destinations in 32 countries throughout the world. 

Business Challenge

Edelweiss wanted to increase the engagement with their direct channel and online booking volumes via an enhanced eCommerce website and digital customer experience. They wanted to reach customers directly in a more contextual, relevant, and personalised way and offer more choice with fast and flexible air search options to drive and maximise revenue optimisation.

Solution

Datalex worked closely with Edelweiss to deliver core services and a business tier as part of the overall new UI and e-commerce retailing solution, creating a highly engaging, customer centric digital experience for Edelweiss’ customers. Datalex delivered the latest REST API as part of their Datalex Direct product to enable the new UI requirements. The powerful flight search and inspiration tool, Datalex Search Server, was configured and implemented to address Edelweiss’ need for almost instantaneous flight search results for all WK 70 routes, for up to twelve months in advance.

How did Datalex Search Server support Edelweiss’ needs?

Datalex Search Server is a powerful flight search and recommendation engine leveraging a sophisticated and rich database of pre-computed flight offers.

It powers fast and flexible air search options and dynamically interrogates multiple sources of data simultaneously in order to compile the most appropriate, relevant and comprehensive offers.

The engine supports more than 20 advanced search parameters, to enable travellers to focus in on their needs, be inspired with relevant and timely flight options and therefore significantly increasing conversion rates.

It allows for wide-range searches with fast response times and that does not hit the PSS (i.e. saving transaction costs for Edelweiss).

The Datalex Search Server ability to rapidly return extensive flight search results for a wide-range time-frame was an industry first and market-leading solution. In 2019 Edelweiss won several industry awards for this ground-breaking solution.

Benefits of Datalex Search Server for Edelweiss include:

• Customer Centricity - Narrows the output of offers to a selection the user desires, inspiring trip research and booking
• Drives Conversion - Increased conversion rates and increased revenue due to presentation of optimum search results matching search criteria
• Customer Satisfaction - Better and more choice for the customer, leading to improved customer satisfaction
• Speed - Increased performance & system response times
• Simplicity - Removes complexity and cost of calculating flight offers
• Cost Reductions – No PSS transaction costs for wide-range searches