International Google Maps Presence Research: Airlines

Zach Pokudov -

Airlines' digital presence has been analyzed in Europe, North America (USA, Canada, Mexico), and MENA. We’ve analyzed 30 airlines in Europe, 15 airlines in North America, and 12 airlines in MENA. We should also point out that for airlines online maps and review services could be less significant than for banks and retailers, as they don’t have as many locations compared to stores and ATMs.

However, taking care of online maps and reviews services could be as crucial because it could help customers to find a relevant airline stand at the airport as fast as possible in case of any problem with their flight. For instance, a flight could be delayed, a customer could have some additional questions, or simply be late. In our research we came to the following conclusion:

  • Among the 15 biggest North American Airlines, 93% are missing crucial information on Google Maps about their businesses, not working with reviews, or have unclaimed business profiles. North American Airlines don’t take online maps and review services into account when they are planning their online digital strategy. They have a lot of missing information (e.g. working hours, photos, websites, and often all of that at the same time). In addition to that, they work neither with positive nor negative reviews.
  • 83% of European airlines are missing necessary information about their business on Google Maps. Among those analyzed EU airlines performs better in comparison to North American one, however, this result is still far from being satisfactory. European airlines also have lots of missing information in every county analyzed (e.g. Germany, UK, France, Poland)  and work with reviews only occasionally. Occasional work with reviews tells us that some attention is being paid, but probably it’s local office managers' initiative. Most of the locations are unclaimed, meaning that 3rd parties could easily get access to it. They don’t have any software to help them with online maps and review services.
  • MENA airlines should pay significant attention to their digital presence. MENA Airlines have inconsistent data about their business in almost every analyzed location, don’t work with reviews at all. They obviously don’t have online maps and review services in their digital strategy and can easily try them out to track results.

Our analysis shows that there is a significant opportunity to grow, as airlines haven’t been considering online maps and review services as something worth attention. Combined with our expertise in various sectors we are sure that we would be able to drive more traffic to airlines from online maps and review services.

Just some brief results of our partnership:

  • Banks. Increase the number of created routes from online maps by 44%. That brought more potential clients from online maps to offline branches.
  • Telecom. Increase replied reviews by 40%, thus establishing a proper channel for communication with customers
  • Retail. Provide a 37% increase in created routes

Conclusion

With that article, we’re finishing talking about our International Google Maps Presence findings. To sum it up, we came up with the following conclusion:

Banks' digital presence on Google Maps

  • 67% of European banks are missing necessary information about their business on Google Maps.
  • Among the 14 biggest MENA banks, 93% are missing crucial information on Google Maps about their businesses, not working with reviews, and have a lot of unclaimed business profiles.
  • Among Indian banks, only 63% of 19 banks don't have an appropriate digital presence.

Retail digital presence on Google Maps

  • 25% of European retailers are missing necessary information about their business on Google Maps.
  • 47% of MENA retailers are missing crucial information on Google Maps about their businesses, not working with reviews, and have unclaimed business profiles.
  • 85% of MENA telecoms are missing crucial information on Google Maps about their businesses.

Airlines

There is no doubt that a seamless customer experience is built on trust. In our digital era businesses should keep in check and update working hours, contact information, photos, offerings, etc. In addition to that businesses should work with customer feedback to show that they care about their clients and that needs to be done in every location.

That should be done not only on social media but also on online maps and review services because that’s where customers are trying to find businesses and create opinions based on reviews. In addition, online maps and review services are among the most critical factors, if we’re talking about local rankings in search engines.

Thus, working with these channels could help businesses to show up even if potential clients would be looking for them in search engines (e.g. Google). We at Geojet have been helping multi-location companies to integrate online maps and review services in their omnichannel strategy for a while. If you are curious to know more about why online maps and review services are important to build a proper omnichannel strategy we recommend you check out this article.

If you got curious about our research and cases or looking for a digital solution in the analyzed field - feel free to let us know :)

If you’re curious about our methodology - please review our methodology article. If you want to get access to our research data - request it at sales@geojet.io