LONDON — Skyscanner is looking to identify untapped demand for new direct flight services, with an eye to a recovery upswing in air travel post-pandemic.

Skyscanner launched the exclusive new solution, the ‘Unserved Routes’ module, within its Travel Insight Vision business intelligence tool.

The suite of Travel Insight products, which includes Travel Insight Vision, analyzes the behaviour of millions of Skyscanner users to reveal where people are looking to travel in the next 12 months, allowing airlines and other businesses to rapidly respond to market changes, understand emerging trends and optimize or plan new routes.

The company notes that the pandemic rendered last year’s data virtually irrelevant. The new tool aims to help airlines and airports leverage forward-looking search and intent data to predict demand and identify new and more profitable route opportunities.

The ‘Unserved Routes’ module provides a first-of-its-kind data segmentation for the global aviation sector, combining flight schedule data with traveller demand insights, says Skyscanner.

And while other data sources typically focus on historic or completed bookings for route planning and yield management, Skyscanner’s solution allows airlines and airports to forecast ahead and understand forward looking demand to restart or create new non-stop services up to 12 months into the future.

Analysis of each route includes search and redirect volumes, average fare prices and conversion rates, with the ability to filter by travel month.

“With signs of recovery on the horizon, we’re unlocking even more of Skyscanner’s unrivalled demand data to help our partners across the aviation sector understand evolving traveller needs. COVID-19 has exposed the limitations of historical data for route planning and management as well as the need to make smarter, faster decisions,” says Michael Docherty, Lead for Data Products at Skyscanner.

“Our new Unserved Routes module within Travel Insight Vision has been designed with airlines and airports in mind, allowing them to forecast daily market demand, build business cases for restarting certain direct routes or even expanding into new ones. We continue to expand the features and functionality of Travel Insight Vision to make it the go to solution for any organisation wanting to understand the latest trends in global aviation,” he added.

More information can be found here.