The Campaign

With the AIRDO ONLINE Service, AIRDO set itself to provide more than just airline services; it aimed to be an enabler of full travel experiences. Using LINE, the leading messaging platform, present in over 95% of smartphone users in Japan, AIRDO could significantly reduce app development costs while effectively reaching customers. An innovative user experience allows users complete all travel procedures in an entirely new way. Leveraging LINE’s messaging features, all concierge services were placed in a compact menu within the app’s chat window, transforming the existing booking model. Focusing beyond just flying customers, AIRDO raised the bar on customer engagement with a whole range of travel solutions from the travel consideration to the post-arrival experience, strengthening the brand’s awareness, building loyalty and driving business growth through a new revenue source.

Creative Execution

The development the concierge service ecosystem was designed within LINE’s chat window to maximize reach among the Japanese young traveller seeking the best experience and accessibility. The concierge is available by becoming friends with AIRDO’s official LINE account and starting a conversation. Using chatbot technology and AIRDO’s existing user database, passengers are able to not only search for flights on any of the servicing routes but also to buy immediately and research for activities in their destinations through it. Flight status, confirmation and check-in can be completed in real time; in addition, ticketing was turned paperless by issuing boarding passes as QR codes scanned at the boarding gates directly from users’ smartphones. Upon landing, users can fetch relevant tourist information from the concierge’s Tabi-Navi function that further enriches their traveling experience by addressing their needs without ever leaving the app.

The AIRDO ONLINE Service's pioneering user experience design has received significant attention for its innovative use of a messaging platform to support business growth. Within just six months since the service launched in October 2016, the AIRDO official LINE account has 500,000 friends registered, signaling strong interest among its target demographic. An effect of its strong popularity was its increase in passenger numbers in comparison to the previous fiscal year by 14.2% (Q3 2016: 2,086 027 vs. Q3 2017: 1,469 063), making it the highest number of passengers ever recorded by the airline. The service has continuously received attention from major mass media in Japan, with the service featured in Nikkei, Yahoo! Japan, among others.

AIRDO’s main targets for this service are young consumers who seek to travel, and who use smartphones as their main source of digital communication. With 68M+ users in Japan, LINE was deemed the most effective way to reach them. To design a concierge, the entire consumer journey was mapped to identify all needs and pair them with solutions that eliminate pain-points across all areas. The collection of solutions was then consolidated within an ecosystem enabling a seamless path to purchase leveraged by a personalized user experience easily accessible through the chat window. Activated by conversation, this method eliminated the need of jumping between apps to search, book flights, check their status, get boarding passes and access suggestions based upon the users’ destinations.