Lufthansa has started building an online account
management platform for corporate clients, akin to corporate portals already
launched by the three major carriers in the U.S. "We plan to have a minimum viable product towards the end of 2019," said
Heike Birlenbach, Lufthansa Group SVP of sales hub airlines and chief
commercial officer of the Frankfurt Hub. "We are building a corporate
platform where we have all the offerings—it could be a price offer, but it
could be various service offers—including analytics of the deal and
self-servicing options. It doesn't have anything to do with the booking; it's
going to be an online platform where all the corporate travel data, flown
revenue, performance data and so on are located."
Birlenbach added that the intention will be to update data as close to
real time as possible. The platform will be accessible for travel managers,
either on their own or when analyzing its contents in conjunction with their
Lufthansa account manager. A second phase will integrate data from
joint-venture partners United Airlines and Air Canada into both the Lufthansa
and United platforms.