SriLankan online bookings get popular
SriLankan Airlines has been able to attract many visitors to its website as a result of which the national carrier re-launched its online booking facility to prop up sales with increased innovative features. The in-house built website has shown an increase in its online bookings reaching 12 per cent of total passenger revenue in March this year compared to 8.87 per cent of total passenger revenue in March 2015, the airline’s E-Business Development Manager Ajith Weerasekera said on the sidelines of the launch of the carrier’s new website in Colombo on Wednesday.
He noted that today the airline earns an average Rs. 800 million a month through the online channel and with the new website the target is to reach 18-20 per cent growth within a span of one year.
The website features new aspects like getting a quote on a family booking when flying to a destination and book now pay later that offers customers to make their payments through any of the listed commercial banks without even possessing a credit card, the airline said.
SriLankan Airlines is also catering to the differently- abled persons by having a talk-back facility that will encourage more customers to make online bookings without physically calling over at a booking office. Another key feature newly introduced is the “Student Special” booking that allows student travelling overseas to stay close to home with discounted travel with each time they fly on the carrier including further discounts for their parents.
In this respect there is a 10 per cent off on the student’s initial air ticket, 15 per cent off on subsequent air tickets and 40 kg baggage allowance as well, the airline said. The website also introduces Sinhala and Tamil as language options for the online booking process, as well as English. More multi-lingual accessibility would be made available within the next few weeks in languages like French, German, Italian, Arabic, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Thai and Russian. In addition, dedicated native home pages are available to users in all countries which SriLankan Airlines operates to, as well as Australia, US and Canada. The site is also connected across social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, You Tube and Instagram and could even be accessed as a mobile app.