airnz.co.nz – making it even easier to find cheap deals

Air New Zealand is making it easier than ever for customers to score cheap deals through enhancements to www.airnz.co.nz which went live this morning.

Manager Global Online Sales Kim Walbridge says the changes make the site even more customer-friendly including subtle enhancements that will make it easier to find special offers and deals on everything from flights to campervan rentals.

More than a third of Air New Zealand’s revenue is generated by its global websites – each of which will be similarly refreshed in a phased programme over the coming six weeks.

“Our websites are a critical sales channel so a huge amount of thought has gone into making the planning and booking experience as seamless as possible. These are the most significant changes to the usability of our site in six years,” Walbridge says.

The booking search function is still the most prominent feature on the home page, which has easy navigation tabs to related products and promotes the best retail deal of the day.

“Nearly half the people coming to our website go straight to the booking search tool, so we’ve done some cool stuff – such as providing a two-month calendar helper - that makes it a lot easier to select the correct travel dates and much harder to enter wrong information.”

All of the tools designed to help people seek out the best deals are clustered into a ‘Finding our Lowest Fares’ page – including a new low fare alert service. This allows customers to enter a preferred origin and destination, specify the price they’re willing to pay, and receive an email alert whenever the fare price drops below their nominated threshold.

Walbridge says this initiative was especially designed to appeal to those customers who only wanted to hear about specials on select routes.

“Our ‘When’s a Good Deal’ function has also proven really popular with customers who have a certain destination in mind, but want to know when it’s cheapest to fly there. Type in your preferred destination and you’ll be shown a range of options for up to six months – from the cheapest weekend to the cheapest week to travel.”

The website refresh also makes it easier for customers to book non-flight related products such as accommodation, travel insurance, rental cars, taxi transfers and campervans. Special deals for all types of travel related products are now grouped by destination so they’re easy to see on the one page. Click on Australia and you’ll see everything from accommodation and car deals to flight deals across the Tasman.

There’s also a ‘How Can We Help You’ search function on each page that customers can use to quickly locate information, an enhanced FAQ section and a travel alert bar that can be used to advise passengers immediately of travel-related issues such as expected weather disrupts.