How Alternative Payments Drive Travel Growth

"Alex Yardley (00:00) ⁓ you Future Of Hospitality (00:03) Welcome to the Future of Hospitality podcast. I'm your co-host Gabi. And today we have a really, really excited podcast with multiple people. In this episode, we're going to explore how travel can really be reshapen by really new payment ways and having new airlines that can give inspiration and help you with the checkouts. Flyfairly is building this awesome, awesome platform. And today I'm joined with 3 people of the team, hello guys! I am really excited for this one and my first question to you guys is give us the play how do alternative play payments change behavior in a way cards don't? Alex Yardley (00:51) Firstly, thank you so much for having us. It's a real pleasure to be here with you today. So maybe we start a little with Fly Fairly in terms of what is Fly Fairly. So Fly Fairly, we're a payments first OTA. That's really how we position ourselves in the market. So our goal is really to offer travelers the majority of payment methods across the planet. We want to offer travelers the most ways to pay for flights and of any travel platform globally. that's... Future Of Hospitality (01:01) Yeah. Alex Yardley (01:19) kind of really leads us on as a segue to your question, which is how does alternative payment methods really change the behavior of consumers? And I think the easiest way to answer that is I think if you look at the behavior of customers as it pertains to alternative payments. So, cards have more friction, right? Cards are typically quite a difficult product to get hold of, especially credit cards. If you're younger and you don't have a credit school, you have to go through all of these different hoops in order to secure a credit card. And I think... Future Of Hospitality (01:36) Mm-hmm. Alex Yardley (01:46) That's the first part about it. And I think the second part, at least from my perspective, is that everybody knows somebody who's got themselves into a bit of a sticky situation with credit cards and debt. Everyone knows someone that's got themselves in a pretty bad trap. And I think there's real mistrust of traditional financial institutions when it comes to gen Z's especially. So think that's really where Binarepe later comes in. really positions itself as a much more responsible form of lending. Future Of Hospitality (02:05) Mm. Alex Yardley (02:15) So if you look at it, credit cards, you can roll the balance on into the petrioty. You pay off the interest every single month, you end up in a pretty bad position. Buying an app later is clear, right? It's very transparent on what affordability looks like. You pay deposit upfront, you typically pay every fortnight and you pay the balance off in four installments. So I think for me, that's really the big differentiator from a consumer's perspective. allows people that don't have access to traditional credit, the ability to... Future Of Hospitality (02:19) Mm. Mm-hmm. Alex Yardley (02:43) make things more affordable. So I think that's sort of from a consumer's perspective. ⁓ From our perspective, we see a very big difference with traditional payments. So on Flyfairly specifically, if you look at the value that is brought in from bookings from alternative payments, I think those that are booking with alternative payments, whether it's crypto or buy an app, pay you what to spend about 35 % more frequently and they spend about 25 % more per booking. Future Of Hospitality (03:09) Mm. Mm-hmm. Alex Yardley (03:12) So for us as a merchant, obviously it's a real big benefit for us to be able to offer alternative payments and give consumers access to their favorite ways to pay. I think that's really the essence of Fly Fairly for us. It's offering over a hundred different ways to pay for consumers. Future Of Hospitality (03:26) Yeah, that's super interesting. you're already talking about the credit card and bad scores. And I think that's really also really something that in Gen Z and millennials are finding, right? Affordable ways to pay, but it's difficult for OTAs. What was the moment where you realized this is a gap in the market? This is something we need to do for this Gen Z and millennials. Alex Yardley (03:51) Yeah, I look, I mean, my 40s, right, so I've been in travel for over two decades now. So I've been worked with some of the largest travel companies in the world. And I think you can probably answer that from a couple of perspectives. One, I think one, if you look at the overall demographic of people that are booking flights, 62 % of flights are purchased by millennials and Gen Z. So it's not a minority anymore. It's a majority of people that make up online travel spent. So that's the big thing. I think the aha moment for me. Future Of Hospitality (04:07) Mm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Alex Yardley (04:20) was that if you look at traditional OTA travel platforms, they are incredibly good at building these very highly converting optimized funnels. Their entire website is really optimized for conversion, for upsells, with behavioral urgency triggers, all of these things that drive these incredibly powerful converting funnels, but it solves for conversion, doesn't solve for the customer. Future Of Hospitality (04:25) Hmm. Mm. Mm, yeah. Alex Yardley (04:46) I think that's one of the things that we really wanted to make that distinction. And if you look at the group that you're targeting, which is Gen Z, one of the things that they say is a non-negotiable for them is building trust. And I think as a challenger brand, we're an unknown. People don't know who we are. And the best way to do that is kind of to lead with your best foot forward. And that's always been one of the core pillars of Fly Fairly, which is how do we have transparency in what we're offering? How do we make it very clear that we don't have any surcharges that check out the price you see is the price you pay? Future Of Hospitality (04:56) Yeah. Alex Yardley (05:15) but we're building what is effectively very easy to use, what Privit likes to call a system one converting funnel. So you take away the cognitive load from the user and you make it nice and seamless. A really good example of that is Apple. It's kind of like aspirational for us to build a very highly converting funnel, but in a way that solves the customer transparency and builds trust. So this for us was that gap. Future Of Hospitality (05:25) Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah, so that's really the gap, right? And I think you're really also pushing on the trust and the trust is becoming more more important, right? ⁓ I really see that that Gen Z millennials, but everybody is right. Currently, like, am I being fobbed right now or not? And how can I really get the right price, for example? What? What could you describe, like what's the most pivotal moment that you guys all had at Fly Fairly, like in the early stages, because it's quite a complex product, it's a quite new gap of market. You're also saying I'm the challenger of the other OTAs, which is a big statement. We have a lot of OTAs here. So yeah, what was the most pivotal moment that you can remember in Fly Fairly journey? Alex Yardley (06:25) Great question. ⁓ You know, for me, I'd put it down to one of two things. One, it's probably the first ever booking. And that's always going to stick with me based on the fact that, you know, when you're building a company for the first time and you have these late, late nights and long hours and you're working for months and months on end with no validation, I think it could be very, very tough. And I think that first booking. Future Of Hospitality (06:32) Mm. Mm-hmm. Alex Yardley (06:49) you ask any founder this, one of those things. think, Gabby, you probably experienced the same thing with Maps Untold, right? It's just a magical feeling. Might just be one booking, but that one customer, it sticks with you forever. Future Of Hospitality (07:00) Yeah, it's a zero to one book, right? That kind of, I get the feeling, right? Like every founder, every, I think every person, when they do their first thing where they're passionate at, they just light up and it breaks the fire that they are like, okay, we really want to do. And what I love about your team is that you really also live in the brand Fly Fairly. Like you guys are Fly Fairly, you're showing it to the world. But for the people at home, like why Fly Fairly? What does the name signal? Why? Alex Yardley (07:34) Um, it's a great question. I would say, look, I'm British. uh, alliteration has always had a soft spot in my heart. think that's probably the best, the best place to start. But I think it really comes down to the fact that we are very deeply practical of Fly Fairly. And I think when you look at some of the big challenger brands out there, um, it's very difficult sometimes to understand what they're selling. But if you're a household name, like a go to everybody knows what a go to sales, but the name itself doesn't actually mean anything. Future Of Hospitality (07:48) Mm. Mm. Alex Yardley (08:02) they've spent a long time cultivating this brand, then they are a household name now. They're a powerhouse in the industry. For us, we're starting off at zero. So from zero to one, I thought if we take this from a deeply practical perspective, how do we have a brand name that helps to educate people and understand A, what it is to sell, and B, what do we stand for? And I think that's really where the moniker Fairly came from. ⁓ It really ties quite nicely into what we're doing with transparent pricing, zero surcharges. Future Of Hospitality (08:09) Hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm. Alex Yardley (08:31) having a fair and transparent system. So that's really the inception story behind the name. Future Of Hospitality (08:37) I love that and we're really focusing on the transparency, but you guys do do more, right? Like it's also people are entering a journey. There's also like kind of like you, you, they, you help them guide, like the, your traveler to plan trips. And I'm really curious because we're clearly in this debate. have tick tock, we have reviews, we have blogs. Is there a difference between how Gen Z plans its travel versus like millennials and how do you guys fit that in your product? Alex Yardley (09:09) That's a great question. think if you look at the big distinction between Gen Z and you look at some of the older generations, I think a lot of the older generations certainly is kind of driven by the technology. It's search-based, it's calendar-based, whereas Gen Z is significantly more discovery-based. I think if you look at some of the studies online from Focuswire, I think they talk about statistics of two in three travelers have been influenced by some sort of social media posts. I think that climbs to over 90 % for Gen Z specifically. Future Of Hospitality (09:20) Mm-hmm. Hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm. Alex Yardley (09:42) And I think this discovery layer is extremely important. And it's one of the reasons why we pushed to bring LFG and Darrell and his team into Fly Failure as part of the acquisition about six months ago. And I think you're actually starting to see some big shifts in the industry. think recently Booking.com has announced its collaboration with TikTok, which is a tremendous step forward, It's very encouragingly where you're able to kind of look at hotels and discover them within TikTok and you can book directly within the app. So I that's the big distinction from a behavioral perspective. Future Of Hospitality (09:52) Mm. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's also because like this, this GenCM and that is what we're talking about. They made up like a lot of the market for flight sales last year. And I think that's also something that currently legacy OTAs are seeing. Where's the market going? Where do we need to go? Because you have to alternative payments, you have to discover layer, there are a lot of things going on. And how do you guys focus or like how do you decide what the focus is? Alex Yardley (10:47) focus from a product perspective in terms of where are we going strategically or where we're, how am I to understand? Future Of Hospitality (10:53) Yeah, well, from a product perspective, yeah. Alex Yardley (10:58) It's a good question. think there's a lot of things you can do as a startup brand. I think one of the things that we find, at least in my experience as a more mature leader in the space, is that if you stretch yourself too thin early on, ⁓ it can cause a ton of issues down the road. And I think for us, this is one of the reasons why we've tried to stick to our guns on our core competency of flights. We wanted to get flights absolutely nailed. And I think there was a couple of challenges that we had in the early days. Every fan. to earn their stripes, in the travel industry. I think having incumbent knowledge in this space has really helped. Future Of Hospitality (11:30) Yeah, I love that. something that's also going on in the travel world and hospitality world is loyalty, right? How can we really get loyalty like a community behind our platform, OTA, hotel, you name it. It's one of the biggest things, right? Because people are understanding loyalty, like fans are the most important things. We see it with influencers, we see it in different brands, having really that community is really important. I know you guys are also big on that, right? The community, loyalty. Could you tell me why young travelers are really interested in that and why loyalty is so important and why they are not motivated by traditional points? Alex Yardley (12:19) Yeah, I mean, think that there's probably two ways to answer that one. I'll probably kick this one to Daryl to talk a little bit about the community led aspect of the Fly Fairly brand, because I think it's really important for us to kind of separate those two pieces out. think one is how do you inspire people at the start of the funnel? And then loyalty is really the opposite end of that, which is how do you drive repeat purchase affinity? Daryl is our kind of leading expert at Fly Fairly when it comes to discovery. Like he led his own company at LFG that was precisely that. So I'll kick it over to you, Daryl. Maybe you can give us some context. Future Of Hospitality (12:46) Mm-mm. Alex Yardley (12:48) what your thoughts are there. Darryl Han (12:50) No, definitely. Thanks Alex. So I mean, from a discovery perspective, we were talking about it, right? The younger audience, especially under thirties, know, they rarely plan trips alone today. Everything sort of a word of mouth or to some extent they share it. They discover on TikTok, they discover on Instagram, they then share it in a group chat or they even create spreadsheets. You know, I've talked to people who create Excel sheets, Google sheets to basically plan their trips and all together. So I think discovery aspects like collaborative boards or even what we did in LFG, which we're going to bring on to Fly Fairly, eventually placeless, right? Think of it like Spotify placeless, but for your favorite ⁓ or bookmarked places or things to do, it matters because it reflects how these younger audiences actually organize their travel. And that's how we're going to shape that in a roadmap with that in mind. Future Of Hospitality (13:27) Mm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I love that. We do see it, right? People are doing spreadsheets or Google Docs four, even 12 people are just collaborating on a travel, which is insane. I love that, but it also helps with converting, right? It really brings the traveler along. It brings them really every step. It's even as much fun as going on vacation. What discovery features... Yeah, convert the best if we look at Gen Z and millennials, like what are, is this for example, the creators list or collaborative work or do you think everybody needs its own tool? Alex Yardley (14:22) I actually think there's a different way to look at this and I'm going to kick it to Prerit for this one because I think one of the things that Prerit's done since he came into Flow Fairly is he has radically changed the way he's thought about UX and design. And I think there's two ways to look at this. One is the piece that Darrell has just very nicely articulated, which is on inspiration, discovery, how do you inspire? Then once you get them on the platform, how do you keep them engaged? And I think one of the big features that Prerit kind of really kind of led with the organization Future Of Hospitality (14:35) Mm. Alex Yardley (14:51) ⁓ I'll let you talk about it in terms of the flight card and how that ties into affordability. Prerit (14:57) Absolutely. Thanks Alex. So this is where we prioritize customer experience, right? In areas that are often an afterthought, right? when it comes to even down to the nitty gritty of things like compliance, right? It is easy, right? A bit too easy, perhaps to give like a massive paywall of legal compliance and like ⁓ all the complicated ways that pricing can come up. I think what we prioritize here is putting in the thought for the customers, right? And trying to predict, right? What matters to them at any given moment so that we can surface it to them intelligently, right? Rather than them having to do the work for it. Future Of Hospitality (15:10) Mm. Mm. Bye. Yeah, I love that. I know you guys are really fairly like it's it's really the trust is a really big thing. And that's why I love it because Alex here, we're talking already a little bit earlier about price ratings and what you see is what you guess. Why is hiding fees killing trust? Why does it affect us as people so much if if there are hidden fees? Alex Yardley (16:01) It's a great question. think that we've done some preliminary research on our site with our audience. And I think, again, this is another one of the great things that Prevotek, when you came in, you did a lot of user research with our base in order to understand how should we change the product. And I think one of the things that came out of that user research, especially with the younger generations, is that the number one complaint they had was a lack of trust in platforms because of sneaky things that were being done. Hidden fees, taxes not being shown, like not having a full transparent price. And I think Future Of Hospitality (16:06) Mm. Mmm. Mm. Alex Yardley (16:30) It becomes a little bit more complex when you talk about a global platform because there are different consumer protection laws in different countries. I I come from the UK where we are in the UK. It's illegal to have payment surcharges, flat out, right? It's illegal to do so. There are not the same levels of consumer protection laws everywhere else in the world, right? And I think platforms that are smart and they're optimizing for conversion, they optimize for profitability and conversion. And therefore in those markets where they're not mandated to do so, they can be a little bit more opaque about how they display pricing. Future Of Hospitality (16:34) Mm. Yeah. Hmm. Alex Yardley (17:00) From our perspective, we wanted to kind of have a same consistent approach to transparency across the board. And I think as a challenger brand, the number one thing that you could do that syncs you quickest is breaking trust. And trust is a very fragile thing, right? So think once it's broken, it's very difficult for users to return. And I think we've seen examples, I'll give you one example without mentioning names of one active player in the industry where they have these great teaser rates as you go through the funnel. Future Of Hospitality (17:05) Mm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Alex Yardley (17:27) And then as soon as you get to checkout, they add a 26 % surcharge on payments, which is wild, right? And think about it from a customer's perspective, you've found your fly, you've gone through the process of selecting it, entering your name, entering your passport details, selecting your seat, 15 minutes invested in the funnel, right at payment, price increased by 26%, right? It's wild. So for us, we never wanted to go down that route. Future Of Hospitality (17:27) Mm-hmm. Hi. Yeah. All It's a thing. Yeah, but it's also insane, right? It's like going to the grocery store and you've already paid for groceries and then you need to pay a lot of amounts again for something. No, it's not the way to go. And I think that also really, really cracks up the trust. And let's be honest, Travel industry is kind of specific because you pay often huge amounts and you're like paying it months or even weeks before you even experience it. So There is already a really bridge of trust that needs to be there and hiding fees there is also really difficult, like making it more painful for the customer. But I know you guys are really focused also on the transparency, but how do you not overload the user with info, right? Because you don't want to tell the whole time, we're transparent or, this is what we're doing or, yeah, how do you make that more containable for a consumer and yeah, not overload them? Prerit (18:49) Yeah, I'll call back to what I said earlier in Touchland and Points, Alex brought here, right? So this is where we prioritize customer experience, especially in areas that are often an afterthought. So put it this way, transparency doesn't mean a data dump, right? It means surfacing right details, right moment. In product, that will come down to two things, clean design, upfront clarity. So we show users what impact their decisions without burying them in fine print, right? And we can humanize this. It is not just a person going through a journey and then kind of being Future Of Hospitality (18:53) Mm. Hmm. Mm. Prerit (19:18) by something they did not read. It could be a stressed out parent, right, who's gone through the flow and just as Alex said, gone to checkout and now you see like this massive wall of legal print that says, okay, now you can add in like these fees or these hidden fees here. This is what we want to avoid because this is a parent, you know, who's stressed out, wants to give their kids a nice holiday, right? This is who we are solving for here. Future Of Hospitality (19:34) Yeah. Yeah. And how do we like users react on like total price upfront? I'm curious that you guys hear some stories of users or people in the market, like what are the reactions? Alex Yardley (19:55) I would say it's overwhelmingly positive. And that was always our goal. I like to joke with our board advisors, you know, investing in trust and transparency early on is the best marketing team we've never had to pay. If I could do it all over again, I would focus double down on this from the start. And I think for us that there's two things that really stands out with our customers when we look at reviews. They love the fact that they're... Future Of Hospitality (20:04) Mm-hmm. Mm. Alex Yardley (20:21) given all of the information up front and they provided this in a very easy way. I Prewitt's done some tremendous things on the UX side of things. think one of the biggest changes that he led with our engineering team was to push the affordability elements of BNPL further into the customer funnel and to help them understand what those installments look like. And I think transparency can mean lots of different things for lots of different people, but Prewitt hit the nail on the head when he said it's really just about communicating the right story and the right information without having overload. Future Of Hospitality (20:34) Mm. Mm. Yeah. Yeah. Alex Yardley (20:52) And I think Darrell can probably touch on some customer stories because he spent a lot of time in the ops team as well early on. So he got to hear a lot of these experiences firsthand. Darryl Han (21:06) Sorry, yeah. Alex Yardley (21:06) So I don't know if you've got any experiences or if you're happy to share any experiences from your side on any customer anecdotes on this. Darryl Han (21:12) No. No, think, ⁓ I think a lot of customers who have come in, you know, at least when they had an initial complaint or some problem that they face, but we actually are able to guide them through step by step because it was part of that product. was part of the booking process already. And then it's clear to them then it's, ⁓ I see. Okay. So you did explain it. You're not trying to, you know, you're not, you guys aren't cheating me. Basically. I think that's a very important emotion that. these customers then feel trust and they tie it to the brand. And that's what really sticks. think then it comes back to the community piece as we talk about, they experienced this, you know, level of empathy and trust with Fly Fairly, right? That, know, Fly Fairly didn't cheat me. They actually understood something went wrong and it was actually made right. And I think that's the kind of thing that drives positive sharing within the community itself as well. Future Of Hospitality (21:56) Mm-hmm. Yeah, I love that. I know like community is a really big, part of the Fly Fairly DNA. How do you create community outside? with customers, but also inside, right? Because I know a few of you guys off the team, you guys are really building something awesome, but the team is also really awesome. So how do you create a culture like that from both the consumer perspective and the team perspective? Alex Yardley (22:37) That's a great question. think it's... We spent a lot of time cultivating the DNA of flight fairly. I'll be honest, right? And I think it comes from a couple of places. One is that we're all pretty high energy people and we all have a strong bias for execution. Two is that as a team, we're all pretty low ego, right? And I think where that really comes from is that... Future Of Hospitality (22:44) Hmm. Hmm. Alex Yardley (23:00) We've all worked in environments where things can sometimes get in the way of execution, whether it's politics or whether it's just people you aren't the most friendly people to work with. And I think we're always very careful about keeping that out of play fairly. And I think the way that we've kind of distilled that down into a culture for us has always been two strong things. One is radical candor, which is it's not what you say. It's really how you say it. And think if you're working with people and you can trust the people you're working with to be honest with you. Future Of Hospitality (23:10) Mm-hmm. Alex Yardley (23:28) and you can be honest with them and you can have this great environment of trust and communication. It's like any relationship, right? It benefits from open, transparent communication. And I think we certainly hold that quite, quite dear for us. And the final one is really bias for execution. You're a startup, right? You can't hide behind things that aren't driving results. If any one person's not operating at their best, then it creates an unfair dependency on other parts of the team. And we all feel it, right? So we all have this kind of care for each other in as much as... Future Of Hospitality (23:34) Mm-hmm. Alex Yardley (23:58) We are motivated to handle our own areas and to execute against very clear objectives, OKRs and KPIs, because we're a lean team. an extremely lean team. We're remote first. And I think one of those things that comes with that is making sure that you have plenty of transparency and communication and everyone feels supported. Future Of Hospitality (24:16) Yeah, I loved it. I really loved it. And I'm really curious, you're already saying we spent a lot of time on the DNA from Fly Fairly. Like you start with an idea, like we want to build this platform. How you go from that to like being the community led challenger brand. It is a big step, right? I have this idea and then your guys really are profiling, like we are in community led challenger. Brand or OTA first, the legacy OTAs, like how did that evolve? Darryl Han (24:52) I can take oops, ⁓ Alex Yardley (24:52) Yeah, I think I'll kick this to Daryl. because I think the one thing I'd add as a preface is that we're not quite there yet. I think we're so early in our journey. We're like about 14, 15 months in. We want to get the foundation there, right? But we are certainly aspiring to become that. And I think bringing LFG in and bringing this community piece in, we see how the whole discovery piece is changing so rapidly. And this is where I knew what Daryl has got and what they've built with LFG was just such a great fit for us. something but I'm certainly not the expert on this. I'll kick this to Dara and maybe you've got some other thoughts on this. Darryl Han (25:25) No, thank you, Alex. So exactly when we brought LFG into Fly Fairly, as Alex mentioned, the vision there was always centered around community, how people discover, how people travel, and not just book it. As we touched on before, ⁓ these younger audience, they're collaborating when they travel, When they're planning, they're sharing and everything. And even today, as an extension of this collaborative element, this somewhat of a community element, right? Future Of Hospitality (25:42) Yeah. Darryl Han (25:52) We also partnered with a payment option called PaySquad. So friends can actually book together and split payments easily. That way planning doesn't fracture at the checkout. And when you remove this friction of coordinating, it makes travel feel free as possible. But as Alex mentioned, in terms of what we've brought up with LFG, we haven't quite made that leap yet in terms of the technology. We're still looking at the best ways to leverage this technology piece in a way that really benefits the traveler. But I think... Future Of Hospitality (25:57) Yeah. Yeah. Mm. Darryl Han (26:21) Again, with that point, the point we continuously iterate, our first leap into building a community is really trust, right? For us, that means starting with transparency, as we've mentioned countless times in this podcast so far, you the price this year is what you pay, no extra payment fees to check out, no surprise charges, surcharges at the end. And I think from there, it's then the empathy piece, as I sort of touched on briefly with the customer support ⁓ layer, right? Future Of Hospitality (26:32) Yeah. Darryl Han (26:50) something goes wrong, people remember if they were treated fairly and with humanity. And that's how you really evolve from just being this product to a challenger, like sort of brand that people, a community led challenger brand that people feel a part Future Of Hospitality (26:56) and Yeah, yeah, I love it. I think the most used word that we have in this podcast is trust. But it's also community, right? But also one thing that's really important is the payment options because you guys, you guys are crazy. You have like more like than 100 payments options. So why did you do that? Why did you go all in on offering 100 plus payment options? Alex Yardley (27:31) think the simple answer is that because it wasn't the easy path. And I think if you're going to be entering a highly mature industry that's gone through several consolidations already, like travel, ⁓ you've got to differentiate yourself. And the only way you can really kind of succeed in such a mature market is to carve out a niche. And I think this is really what we wanted to solve for. if you take a step back and look at the travel industry more holistically, it's really Future Of Hospitality (27:51) Mm. Alex Yardley (28:00) focused around price elasticity and solving for a product that has very tight margins, certainly in flights. So flights are extremely tight in margins and that really restricts what you can do as a company in terms of the options you want to sell. So if you want to sell certain payment options at checkout, you want to provide those, you're really restricted in terms of ones that you can make work within the unique economics that are available to you if you're like offering the very best prices out there. And I think from our perspective, the question was, how can we target the long tail? Future Of Hospitality (28:07) Mm. Mm. Alex Yardley (28:30) How can we look at certain markets and look at certain trends in payments and say, are we able to offer additional payment methods that the others are not, that allow us to carve out a niche and to do so in a sustainable way that we are still able to grow? And I think the missing piece of that formula was just the effort required to push the integration. And I think that's where we have an extremely strong advisory board at Flight Fairly. have a lot of people that have a phenomenal amount of experience in the payments network. Future Of Hospitality (28:41) Mm. Yeah. Alex Yardley (28:59) And think bringing those on board was really able to kind of create such a symbiotic relationship between travel and payments and being able to say, right, how do we now connect the dots with this incumbent knowledge we have in both of these respective industries to offer something that's not widely offered elsewhere? And I think we're 18 months old, right? And I think we now have more payment options than any other platform worldwide, which is wild, right? I'm so proud. Future Of Hospitality (29:13) Yeah. Yeah, it is. It is wild. Really wild. But you're saying it's really good, right? You're connecting the travel and the payment options and it's quite a niche. So we know like Gen C uses e-wallets quite often, like a lot. But how do you make the terms crystal clear without adding friction? Because it is kind of new combining, for example, cryptocurrencies to your flights or e-wallet. yeah, how do you make it crystal clear without adding friction? Prerit (29:53) Gen Z already live in the wallet. So the friction isn't using BNPL, right? It's understanding it in the right way. So the trick is surfacing the essentials, like say installment counts or the total repayment and fees. So things that are of more niche to the travel industry and the flight checkout flow. And we do that contextually in the checkout flow, right? So not hidden behind like a 10 page PDF. So it's not a radical statement what I'm suggesting here, right? To suggest clean UX beats like a compliance wall. And with modern tooling, if you use services like Stripe, for instance, right? Future Of Hospitality (30:00) Mm. Mm-hmm. Mmm. Prerit (30:23) you can bake those terms very cohesively in the same screen as the pain or button, right? So just as when you need to understand these terms. So this way you can keep conversion very high while you keep trust intact. Future Of Hospitality (30:31) Mm. Hmm. Yeah, but like if I look from an outsider perspective to Flyfair, you guys have... It is a complex product. I already said it's a complex product and you're doing something really really cool. But how do you keep it reliable? Because it is important, right? Alex Yardley (30:58) Yeah, you're talking on the, I mean, think there's, there's, two or there's several elements to, to reliability when it comes to things like the website itself, supplier reliability on the flight side, because the flights industry is, it's really propped up by quite old legacy technology. That's not the most reliable. And then there's the payments orchestration piece, which we've built some of our own proprietary IP around that as well. So it's, you're right. It's, it's, it's a complex piece, right? It's an entire ecosystem, which we built at Flight 30. And we've built it in an incredibly short amount of time. And I think that's testament to the fact that Future Of Hospitality (31:05) Hmm. Mm-hmm. Alex Yardley (31:27) Again, it's the culture that we have internally in terms of our bias for execution, but also we have an extremely strong network and a tremendous wealth of experience in the company to be able to build things very quickly. I mean, probably one of the things that I'm really proud of is the redundancy tech that we've built within the flight supply space. And I think this is where, yeah, please, Gabby, tell me. Future Of Hospitality (31:48) Thank Why are you proud of that? I think it's really complex and I understand the complexity, but for the listeners at home, why are you proud of that? Alex Yardley (32:03) I think the reason why is just look at the product. If you're selling a sweater or if you're selling a sofa or if you're selling any sort of a physical product, it has a fixed price typically. It doesn't change in price. Whereas flights are not like retail in that way. The industry is time sensitive. So flight prices, they change dynamically all of the time. We offer 650 airlines at Flight Fairly, which is probably 50 % more than some of leading OTAs. So it's a tremendous amount of connectivity that you've got with... Future Of Hospitality (32:14) Mm. Mm. Yeah. Mm. Alex Yardley (32:32) almost a thousand different companies to drive real-time inventory in most cases. So it's extremely complex just from the sheer scale of it. And I think from our perspective, having that reliability, the users shouldn't have to be burdened by that. The whole point of building a system one website where users can come in is that we do all of that hardware behind the scenes and it's never ever felt it just works. So for us, if anything goes down, if an airline goes down, if a supplier goes down with any of the other connectivity, Future Of Hospitality (32:34) Hmm. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Alex Yardley (33:01) Within milliseconds, redundancy kicks in and another supplier comes in and takes its place and the user is none the wiser. Future Of Hospitality (33:07) Yeah, yeah, I love that because like, like hotel connectivity, airline connectivity is such an important thing. And people don't know the tech behind it because you're connecting thousands and thousands different moving pieces that all have different grades. And it is a piece of masterwork that if you can combine it and really, really make it optimized. Do you guys also use AI within that? Like to aggregate suppliers, make smart choices? Alex Yardley (33:38) I mean, there's an element of, I wouldn't say AI, but more machine learning when it comes to different prices and routes. So we all kind of scan prices all the time from different suppliers and we encourage our suppliers to offer the very best rates for any given route at any given point in time. And we're constantly evolving the different offers which we push. So we don't push everything through to the front end. What we do is we pre-aggregate those, we scan them, and then we present the very best offers on the front end based on what's available and in terms of best pricing and in terms of those offers that our customers prefer. Future Of Hospitality (33:42) Mm. Mm. Alex Yardley (34:07) So there's many different types of offers, some for certain routes they may prefer, those with baggage and those without. So it's not always the price that wins. That's why I said the orchestration tech is pretty complex on the back end. Future Of Hospitality (34:17) It is complex. is complex. Yeah, no, but I love that. And I think also the speed, right? It's important for the conversion on the website and then the customer journey that results come there, that the preference are there. ⁓ It is a whole other happening word, right? AI. Everybody's talking about it. Everybody is chasing this trend. And I heard Darryl talk about customer service and you do see a lot of customer services be, yeah, changed to AI, but I know empathy is really important and how do you guys try to keep the customer service in the community led with a human layer or are you also like using maybe AI for that? Alex Yardley (35:01) Yeah, I think we're bucking the trend on this one. And I think the reason why is because one of the things that we're really praised for as a company is our customer service. And I'm extremely proud of that, right? And I think it's funny, not many people know this, but we all have several pseudonyms on the customer service channel for Fly Fairly. And I think if you never know who you're going to get at any given point in time, it's one of the things that I mandate for any of these guys are smiling because they felt it intimately themselves, which is Future Of Hospitality (35:10) Yeah. Mm. Alex Yardley (35:30) Anyone who comes into my company is mandated to do customer service for a number of months. Why? Because I believe it's the very best way for you to get connected with the customer and understand what is it that the customer is looking for? What is the plight of the customer? How do you understand the... Future Of Hospitality (35:35) and what And how did it feel for you guys to do that? That Alex says you guys need to do customer service. They're all. Darryl Han (35:54) It was Prerit (35:54) Maybe you want to schedule. Darryl Han (35:54) a baptism of fire as Alex would put it. But honestly, no, was honestly, it was an experience. Like it was a really eye opening experience. I've never done customer service in my life. And having done so, I understand the pain points. I understand the restrictions, the limitations of not just what they're seeking, but just... the industry as a whole. it was a real learning for me. And at the end of the day, that's really, as Alex put it, like that's the closest you're going to connect to the actual customer booking the flights itself, right? That's the closest that you're going to interact with them, like literally. So it was an amazing experience. think everyone, every startup, everyone should do this and mandate this. Future Of Hospitality (36:31) Yeah. You Darryl Han (36:41) And I believe a lot of big companies do this too. know, DoorDash, know that Lyft, DoorDash, the CEOs do deliveries, they do rides. I think it's amazing to see our leader, CEO, Alex as well, know, the customer service so hands on. Future Of Hospitality (36:54) I love that. And period, was it for you to have that? Prerit (37:00) Well, I'd say is that I think it's easy sometimes for product teams to miss the trees for the forest. You you focus on the big picture, you focus on macro research, right? Big trends and trying to solve for them. You forget that really what matters is solving for the customer. Alex tells me so often, right? The only way you really understand the pain of the customer is to be on the receiving end when they are really frustrated, right? So this is something we are mandating not just for me, but also for my organization as the designer. come in and I flesh out the product organization. We have to spend time with the customer service team. We have to spend time with the customer. That means having multiple check-ins and checkpoints with the customer service team to understand what are the pain points of our frontline. These are the people who are dealing and supporting the customers. What do we need to do to support them? And speaking directly with the customers, understanding and hearing directly from them. are the pain points of these individuals? not just some aggregate data, not just some trends that we are seeing, right? What is the individual who's trying to book or has booked Wi-Fi fairly? What are they dealing with? What do they like? What did they dislike, right? There's no better way to understand this than to just speak to them. Future Of Hospitality (38:14) Yeah, I totally agree with that, right? If you're building a product or even a service, talk with your customers. It's so important to learn that. And especially, I think what your guys are doing is you are really the challenger for audio DAs because you're not only chasing the payments, you are doing something really cool with the orchestra for the flight activities, but also having, you're going to create this, this, this cover element. So you have a lot of Yeah, things that you're tuning and you're improving on the whole customer journey. how do you, because you're reinventing the whole customer journey, which is a lot of steps. Where do you put the focus? Right? Because Rome is not built in one day. You need to build it day by day. How do you intend to roadmap on that? Alex Yardley (39:08) Yeah, I think for us it's logically probably the best way that I can distill it. think everything is step by step, right? You start with the foundations. And I think for us getting a foundational system that works extremely well. So that's where the supply redundancy came in. That's where having all of the very strong IP tech that we have on the payments orchestration piece came in. We have a very smooth, very well oiled system that is built to scale. And then you start to build features on top of that. And then the question is, Future Of Hospitality (39:17) Hmm. Hmm. Alex Yardley (39:37) given any given number of options. And I think that's where we kind of look at things. it's a lot of the executive rigor that I have kind of picked up at my time at eBay and also at Booking Holdings is how do you kind of go through that design development process? And for us, it's you start with a hypothesis and you say, well, now let's look at what is the potential opportunity here in terms of solving for a customer need. Let's set a target. Let's map out what that looks like. Let's understand what the budgets and the resources are required to make this happen. And then we scale those with perhaps a scorecard and we do these, I would say, six monthly events. So every six months as a team, we have like a strategic offsite where as a remote first company, it's a great opportunity for us to fly to a different location and all to get together and kind of spend time together. But also as a management team, every month we kind of get together and we sit down and we look at that innovation roadmap and how are things being built out. So I think for us, it's really taking a scientific approach to this and saying, well, what is the size of the opportunity? How does it fit in with our existing roadmap? Future Of Hospitality (40:21) Hmm. Alex Yardley (40:36) and where do we believe that the right bets are placed in the right places. Future Of Hospitality (40:42) Yeah, like listening to you guys this is during this podcast, I hear like you have a great team, your product is, it is insane. It's like insane in good way, right? And we always talk about the future on this podcast. my final question to you guys is how does the customer journey for somebody that's going to book a flight. So they are searching, they're booking. How are we going to change that to being inspired, bouquet, and really pay it easily? Like, in five years, what should the customer journey be at Fly Fairly? Alex Yardley (41:19) Well, I honestly think they are, one is not going to replace the other. And I think so, think of it this way, right? Sometimes you know where you want to go. Sometimes you want to be inspired. Sometimes you know exactly where you want to go. And the traditional booking engines that exist today, search, calendar, so on and so forth, it's the path of least resistance. I don't need to be inspired if I know where I'm going to go. And there's always going to be a demand for repeat travel. Like they're just a nice, easy way to book. Future Of Hospitality (41:32) Hmm. Mm. Alex Yardley (41:47) And I think one of the events on top of that is really, how do you condense that down into a simpler process? And I believe that's sort of where agentic AI comes in. So search, booking through an AI platform, that's really interesting. We've seen some players in the space, of look and start to build some of these solutions at with varying degrees of success. Very, very exciting. 1 % of search comes from AI. So it's still very nascent. The other side is really on the discovery, which is the younger generations, they live within the social. Future Of Hospitality (42:08) Mm. Alex Yardley (42:16) discovery sphere. That's sort of where Darrell has got his teeth and where he's got tremendous amount of experience. I always say no one speaks Gen Z better than Gen Z. So I think that's where you see plenty of examples of this in the market and that's why Darrell and his team are such a great addition to our leadership crew. I think it's really both of those two things working in harmony going forward and seeing the evolution in both of those spaces. Future Of Hospitality (42:17) Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I really want to thank you guys for hopping on the podcast and talking about the future of travel. I really liked it. And I think we learned a lot, right? Community is important. Trust is the foundation of everything and really focus on what the customer wants. Dive into what they say at the customer service. You guys are building a tech and I think the techies that are listening understand that it is insane. Like the fly connectivity, it's super interesting. So I want to thank you guys so much. And I want to thank the listeners for listening. And if you are listening on Spotify, please also subscribe. If you're watching on YouTube, subscribe to really be at the future of hospitality and travel. Guys, thank you. from Fly Fairly. I'm really, yeah, again, thanks. And thank you for the listeners at home. "