OREANDA-NEWS. People are used to arranging their lives according to their customized preferences. To support this, the Lufthansa Group is making major investments in the areas of product customization and digitalization.

Between now and 2020, the Lufthansa Group will be investing 500 million euros in the new development and improvement of personalized digital offers alone. Whether above the clouds or on the ground – the Lufthansa Group is reacting to customer preferences with tailor-made digital offers. For example, travellers can already download 250 newspapers and magazines as eJournals, and over 200,000 downloads in February alone show how customers are enthusiastically welcoming the offering. Customers can ask the chatbot “Mildred” about the best prices for flights. They can also access current information regarding their flight with the Apple Watch while in the air and much, much more. Most recently, the airline group has been developing a new application for the “personal assistant” Google Home. The little device will soon be able to use text to speech technology to answer questions regarding upcoming Lufthansa flights.

“At Lufthansa, digitalization is much more than just developing new apps. We offer our clients state of the art technology to respond to their requests and provide them with the best possible support for their journeys,” says Harry Hohmeister, Member of the Executive Board of the Lufthansa Group and responsible for the Hub Airlines. He continued, “It isn’t just about major innovations – it’s also about all the little things that make travelling with us more pleasant, more comfortable and more personalized.”

As an ITB exclusive, the Executive Board of the Lufthansa Group announced another previously well-kept secret: The new Boeing Triple Seven X, planned to take off for the first time in 2020, will be getting a completely newly designed business class. Perfect customization and digitalization are also the theme of this newly developed generation of seats: passengers can control their seats wirelessly using their own smartphones or tablets. The position of the seat as well as the inflight entertainment can be controlled directly via their personal devices “This seat will be more than ‘just’ a seat. It will meet the specific needs of customers – no matter whether they prefer to work or sleep, or whether they are travelling with their families or on their own for business. You really have something to look forward to. Let us surprise you,” said Harry Hohmeister, speaking at the ITB.

The new business class seat doesn’t only represent quality and customization – it is also an example of a new strategy within the Lufthansa Group: an ever increasing joint responsibility for processes. For instance, the new seat was developed for the network airlines Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines and Swiss collectively. The sales division was also restructured last year, across all Lufthansa Group hub airlines. Heike Birlenbach, Senior Vice President Sales Hub Airlines Lufthansa Group, emphasizes: “Standardized processes across all three hub airlines and shared structures reduce complexity and make our customers and sales partners the central focus of everything we do.” The “BookaGroup” platform that will be expanded for all three network airlines in the second quarter of 2017 is one example of this approach. Sales partners will be able to request any desired group travel combination with Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines and Swiss in a single web-based tool, and book them with immediate confirmation.