As mentioned in a previous blog post, it is interesting for airlines, but also for tourism actors in general, to integrate several modes of transportation on its platform. However, with many players on the mobility market, but also on the hotel market, it can be difficult to find your way around. Integrating so many companies can quickly become time-consuming. This is how the idea of Yilu was born. Let’s take a closer look at this solution.
A digital platform to interconnect several services
Founded in 2018, Yilu was born in the digital innovation units of the German Lufthansa Group. Its goal: To help tourism companies sell their products, but also to offer new products from other players to their end customers. In one integration, it offers a complete catalog including transportation and hotel offers.
By proposing to gather on a single platform, Yilu ensures that end-customers get a fully tailored experience. Although it is not the only one to offer this type of technology, Yilu intends to find a place in its market. Indeed, according to Sascha Güenther, one of the company’s co-founders, “We’re not the first to look at the entire travel chain and try to make it seamless, but the Lufthansa Group is one of the largest travel companies in Europe and it has a right to play in this space as well.” With this type of service, Yilu significantly reduces external data integration development time for companies.
With the goal of reinventing and even anticipating the traveler experience
With its first customer, Eurowings, a low-cost subsidiary of the Lufthansa group, Yilu has demonstrated the strength of its product. Indeed, Yilu has integrated directly on the application of the latter, ground transportation options. This includes MyTaxi, a German company that aggregates several cab services around the world. And Yilu’s plans don’t stop there. Over time, they want to develop different “tools that will allow reorganizing a customer’s trip by offering a relevant re-routing recommendation“. In the case of a train cancellation, for example. A service that could totally rethink the traveller experience in the travel sector.
We can therefore imagine an airline application, allowing at the same time to book his flight, his hotel and his different means of transport to get to his destination. Or even further, integrating this system directly into the IFEs of the planes. To go further, discover our case study: “Why should airlines include ground transportation in their offers?“
