FLIO — Creating the digital future for airports?
Airports around the world all share the same problem: they are unable to build meaningful and engaging digital touchpoints. Declining aeronautical revenue, fees charged to airlines, along with the trend of growing revenues from retail and concessions are motivating airports to adjust their monetization schemes. This entails increasing direct engagement with an ever-more mobile-savvy audience — the connected traveler.
Airports worldwide are instead wasting a lot of money building proprietary mobile apps that only gather dust in the app stores. By the end of 2018, about 80% of the world’s airports will have apps for engaging passengers. Nevertheless, Travel Tech specialist tnooz reports that airport apps are downloaded a staggering 14 times less than airline apps.
No matter where they’re located, airports consistently fail to figure out what really drives passengers to regularly engage with their mobile applications. One thing is clear: low perceived value, limited context, and a below-average user experience do not add up to a promising value proposition. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that mobile airport applications are not important to most travelers.
To overcome this challenge, ambitious startup FLIO from Hamburg, Germany is on a mission to create a viable digital future for airports. As a universal “one-stop-shop” in air travel, the app addresses the gap between passenger demand and airport digitization strategies. More and more airports worldwide are partnering with FLIO to communicate with and service their travelers and other airport visitors. Covering more than 300 airports with deep content and more than 3,000 airports overall, FLIO calls itself “the global airport app.”
FLIO stands out with its stakeholder-focused approach: the startup has uniquely understood the importance of working with airports and their respective stakeholders. At the same time, FLIO adopts a passenger-first attitude in using this knowledge to create an appealing, highly relevant bundle of information and services.
For travelers, FLIO eliminates infrastructural determinants like Wi-Fi access and spotty indoor navigation. The app synchronizes and aggregates information via airport APIs and enriches existing resources like Google Maps with its own, exclusive data to create deep content. This is complemented by a seamless and highly intuitive user experience.
Meanwhile, the airport landscape faces stagnating or declining aeronautical revenue (which includes landing charges, for instance). At the same time, non-aeronautical revenues are growing significantly. In 2015, for example, Heathrow’s “airport concession and retail income” grew by 8.4% compared to 1% growth in aeronautical revenue.
Today, airport retail remains behind the digitization curve. It is therefore limited in its means to directly address customers. In most cases, airport retailers are dependent on walk-in-customers. They are also unable to reach travelers through classical marketing strategies. To begin with, display advertising at the airport is overly expensive. There are no other ways to address global travelers early in their individual journeys, as touchpoints are either missing or operated by OTAs and airlines. FLIO, therefore, serves as a relevant gateway to the airport-retail audience, for instance, through push notifications with deals and coupons that can help lure customers into stores or restaurants.
The app is totally free and takes only seconds to download and start using. The company primarily monetizes the service through lead fees from retailers. Another growing revenue stream are fees for in-app-purchases like urban transport tickets (e.g. Heathrow Express).
FLIO is the brainchild of serial entrepreneur Stephan Uhrenbacher, a well-known presence in the German startup scene with many years of experience in Travel & Mobility Tech. Before founding FLIO, Stephan founded Qype which he built into Europe’s largest local review website. Qype was acquired by Yelp in 2012 for $50M. Stephan also founded the short-term lodging platform 9flats, which acquired competitor Wimdu in 2016 and was then sold to Wyndham Hotels. Earlier in his career, Stephan founded Travel Channel and helped to grow lastminute.com as Head of Northern European Operations.
The startup was founded in 2014 and has offices in Hamburg and London. FLIO raised seed funding from undisclosed investors in April 2015. To our information, no further funding was disclosed afterwards.
Besides hundreds of individual airport applications, only a few notable ventures follow a universal approach. Unlike FLIO, comparable players build their value propositions around a single key feature. Tripchi, for example, focuses on deals and discounts, whereas GateGuru positions itself in mapping and navigation. GateGuru, a part of TripAdvisor, has already achieved equally relevant coverage, despite having lower content quality. The app is monetized by advertising, which negatively impacts the overall user experience.
FLIO is poised to become the first universal digital platform for the airport touchpoint segment. Markets dominated by such platforms frequently reflect “winner-takes-all” scenarios. FLIO is well placed to become this winner given its broad, global content, the entrepreneurial experience of the team, and its considerable head start in terms of scale and penetration.
