The Airline Tech Podcast
Join Garth Lund for a series of conversations with the leaders shaping the future of airline tech. We explore how new technology is transforming the airline business, focusing on real-world applications to drive commercial growth, improve operational performance, and enhance the passenger experience.
The Airline Tech Podcast
Ep 3: The underestimated potential of group travel - with Garth Lund and George Michalopoulos
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Group travel generates $30-50 billion revenue annually for airlines. Yet most airlines still rely on webforms and manually quote each group.
George Michalopoulos joins Garth Lund to talk about how Groupz is bringing group bookings into 2026.
(0:35) Intro to Groupz
(1:35) Group revenue and potential upside
(2:32) Group booking pain-points for airlines and their customers
(8:35) Mitigating revenue management risks
(10:27) Preparing for agentic bookings
(13:40) Going live with Nouvelair
(15:16) The travel agent’s perspective
(18:15) Buy vs build
Published by The Engine Cowl
Hello and welcome to the Airline Tech Podcast. I'm Garth Lund. In this episode, I'll be speaking to George Mikelopoulos, founder of Groups. That's Groups with a Z. At SoManyAirlines today, the group booking process is still archaic. You fill out a web form, and four days later, somebody will email you a quote. Find out how George and the team at Groups are looking to bring group bookings into the 21st century and prepare for a world adapted for agentic booking. Hi George, welcome. Hi Garth, thank you. Thank you for having me. So you founded Groups almost a year ago now. What originally drew you to the group booking aspect of the airline tech stack as opposed to another area?
SPEAKER_01So I started in Airlines in 2004, so 22 years ago. And I started at a small startup in Geneva. It was called a regional airline called Fly Babu. And so I was made head of revenue management there, and one of my responsibilities was groups. And you know, you look you look 22 years later, and the way we were managing things back then, with emails, with phone calls, hasn't really changed much in terms of group booking management. So yeah, there are a few airlines who have uh done stuff, but I'd say it's less than 5 or 10% of airlines who've actually automated group bookings process. Uh the reality for the 90% is they're still operating the same way they did 22 years ago.
SPEAKER_00To set the context for those who may not know already, typically what percentage of an airline's passengers are part of a group booking?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so it's it's interesting because it really depends geographically. Um so you got markets like Europe where it's two to five percent. Um in some cases it's it's a bit more than that, maybe even close to 10%. Um and then you've got markets like the Middle East where it's can be well north of 10%. Uh North America is probably on the on the lower end, slightly lower than Europe. Um, I'd say globally, I mean, I think I don't think there's really good data around this, but I would uh expect it to be somewhere in the 3% to 5 uh percent range, which when you just think about the revenue, uh I mean, we're looking at about a trillion dollars um in ticket revenue for commercial airline passengers. Uh so three to five percent of that is thirty to fifty billion dollars. So it's uh it's a very annually, so it's a very significant uh segment.
SPEAKER_00You touched on this earlier, but how would you describe the core pain points for airlines right now and how they're managing group bookings traditionally?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think there's a few of them. Um I think one is speed. You know, I think you get a lot of uh complaints uh, you know, from customers, you go into forums like Reddit and you say, you know, you hear them saying, you know, it's 2026 and still takes days for airlines to get back to me with a group quote. So I'd say one is speed. I think from an airline management standpoint, uh you also have visibility. Um a lot of airline leadership or don't really have visibility. It's a bit of a black box that many airlines uh just because it's done, I think no bad intentions, it's just done so manually. Uh and it's just hard to report on on stuff which is done manually. I think the third pain point uh where which I think we can really unlock a lot of revenue is because it's done so manually, the way the process actually works now is you request that you're in a group organizer, a travel agent, you request the group. Um and it's a bit up to luck in the sense that you might request, say, uh, you know, say there's a you're on an airline and there's five flights a day, and you say, Well, I want the three o'clock flight. Um, and the airline will come back with a quote for the three o'clock fight. But you might be out of luck in that on that three o'clock flight, there was already another group, so they're going to price it at twice they would have priced the flights maybe two or three hours earlier or later. Um, so I feel right now uh that customers are making decisions and groups on imperfect information. So I think there is a there's a there's an issue in you know getting that full information over to the customer, and that's gonna result in significantly more sales that down the road for airlines.
SPEAKER_00So given there is that upside um and more sales potential, how would you see the math for an airline of that upside that's sitting there in their um group booking revenue segment?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, listen, I think the airlines which have low single-digit um group share, uh I'm confident that the majority of them can be doubled. You can double their group revenue uh by managing it effectively. I think obviously if you're a Middle Eastern carrier already, you know, doing 15-20% um uh group share, it's gonna be hard to double that. But there's very significant money being left on the table right now. I mean, you just think about it. Uh globally, there's around 6 billion passengers. Uh sorry, uh, yeah, I think it's around 6 billion passengers. And I think the load factor, average global load factor is just above 80%. Uh so you've got about a billion empty seats globally. So, you know, what can you do with these billion empty seats? And I think you need to look down at which segments you're you're you're under-delivering on. And very, I think groups is one where airlines are consistently under-delivering.
SPEAKER_00So 15 years ago, um you were head of revenue management at Wiz Air Um or had recently stepped into that role. Wiz was, if not the first, one of the first airlines to um automate the group booking process. Now, as you mentioned, a few more airlines have automated it, but the majority uh still use a manual process for group bookings. Why do you think more airlines haven't yet adopted an automated process? Is there some friction there? It seems like relatively low-hanging fruit uh in terms of the revenue upside.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think that's the key. I think, well, I think there are two factors. I think one, airlines don't realize uh how low-hanging uh fruit this is. Um I think that's the first point. Um and I think the other point, I mean, having you know worked at airlines for almost 20 years, is there's uh airlines always have limited uh tech budgets, and it you know, it's always a fight over who's going to get that money, and it's a fight between you know commercial operations and finance or you know the other departments, and you know, most can usually get a couple projects in every year, and group simply doesn't make the cut. Uh so I think it's it's it's those two facts a combination of those two factors.
SPEAKER_00What do you think is different now about the company groups that will enable airlines to, let's say, win that prioritization fight and get group bookings automated?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I think the key, I mean, technology's evolved a lot over the last uh uh you know 10, 15 years. And um, I think APIs, which is the way by which we connect uh with the airlines reservation system, are significantly more efficient uh than they used to be. Now we can uh you know integrate really with minimal effort on the I on the IT's teams uh or so on the airlines IT uh team. Um so you know, I mean we're 12, you know, we're talking in hours, uh hours of work on their end. I mean, we're doing all the heavy lifting. So I think that's really uh a critical uh critical thing. I mean, when we when we talk to airlines, we say, listen, you know, I mean, this shouldn't really be taking any um you know any time out of your resource. I mean, it's really negligible.
SPEAKER_00So you're saying potentially only a few um a few man hours for um for the airline side. In total, how long would a typical integration take for a new airline on the platform?
SPEAKER_01So, you know, we're still in the early phases, so it depends. It will depend um if we've already integrated with their PSS or their passenger service system or not. Um if we have, I mean it can be very fast. I mean, it'll depend on uh you know if if there's any uh special things that they want which go beyond the core product, but it could go as fast as six to eight weeks.
SPEAKER_00From a revenue management perspective, which you know is both is close to both our hearts in a sense, um one of the risks with group bookings, and even more so with a series of groups or allotments, the risk is that you price the group too low, and then um it's hard to recover from that in generating sufficient revenue performance for that flight because you've sold a large number of seats at too low a price. Uh I know that the group's platform um also enables airlines to instantly quote um group bookings. How do you mitigate that risk around not pricing too low?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I think you can put guardrails in, and I think the guardrails can um you know take a number, take a number of four forms, whether it's just a you know a minimum fare where uh you don't go below that, and you know, no matter what the uh algorithms suggest. You know, I think the bigger question here is it's I guess it goes back to a little bit what Warren Buffett once said, that um, you know, he he his biggest regrets were errors of omission as opposed to errors of commission. Um I don't think the real issue is uh underpricing a group here or there. Uh I think the real issue is that airlines are walking away from so many groups. Uh so I mean, you know, even if you underprice, I mean, if it's 3% of your revenue, 5% of your revenue, and you underprice a small percentage of that, uh that's not the end of the world. I think the bigger issue is that that 3% should be 6%, or the 5% should be 10%. Uh I mean, you do have, uh, you know, as an industry, uh, we do have over a billion empty seats every year. Uh so I think that's that's really where the the focus needs to be. But absolutely we can put all the, you know, we can put the guardrails in in place um to protect the inventory.
SPEAKER_00Maybe now projecting forward, um, how are you thinking about the development of group bookings, um, either within the context of groups, the company, or or groups in general, um, with respect to the advent of agentic booking?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, agentic bookings are coming and they're coming fast, and it's something we're working on. You know, it's a it's a very easy use case. Um, and you know, we're currently working on developing uh an MCP to be able to handle agentic group bookings, and you know, we're we're looking forward to uh getting the f the first requests in coming months.
SPEAKER_00Uh so do you expect um in future the let's say the bigger lift for integrations will be plugging into airline PSS systems or reservation systems, or more on the MP and MCP side um with agents?
SPEAKER_01So I no, I think I mean I think the MCP is gonna be relatively straightforward. I mean the integrations with the PSSs that will still be uh, you know, I I expect still be dominated by APIs. Um, you know, typically the biggest challenge is always the first customer. Uh, and then once you have one customer integrated, it's it's relatively fast. Uh but yeah, I think from a from a technical standpoint, the the API is always the uh I think the bigger challenge.
SPEAKER_00Having spent um, as you mentioned, close to 20 years on the airline side, now also a few years on the tech side, where do you typically see or where would you see the biggest disconnect between airlines and tech providers?
SPEAKER_01It's a good question, and uh one I've thought about a lot. And I think you know, when I was on on the airline side, uh what I was really looking for is a uh you know, a partner, uh, somebody who's got my interests at heart. Um and yeah, I I mean I think a lot are a lot of vendors are just selling you software. And I think what we uh you know, what we aspire to be at groups is much more than that. There's really a partner. The framework we've we've set up and how we get compensated as a vendor is also make sure our incentives are aligned with those of the airline. So the airline does poorly, we don't want to be compensated. If the airline does well, we do uh, you know, we do want to be compensated. But it's I really believe in this uh partnership model. And you know, I if I think back, uh, you know, the best vendors we've worked with are those who really put our interests at heart. And also, airlines tend to be, you know, have a lot going on. It's a very difficult business. There's always uh there's always a crisis, there's always a situation going on, and you're looking for a partner who can do the heavy lifting, and that's also the role we want to play. Uh be a partner, we'll drive, we'll make sure we have aligned incentives, and we're happy to do the heavy lifting. You know, you should be seeing the results, and we should be compensated if we deliver results. If we don't, we shouldn't be compensated.
SPEAKER_00Or yeah, or you'll replace us. So you're already live with uh one airline. Can you tell us a bit about um your launch customer and how that um initial go live has gone?
SPEAKER_01So our go our uh launch customer is Nouvel Air, um, an airline uh based in Tunisia. I think they I mean it's been going really well. Uh they were our launch customer, so um they uh really we went live in in November with basically an MVP. Uh and since then, you know, every week or two we've been uh releasing new features. I think reception has been really good uh from both them, from the travel agents. We got increasing sales volume, some of the features uh which we've launched, like negotiating, uh allowing customers to negotiate through the platform, uh, has been a big hit. Um especially we find that once uh customers do negotiate through the platform, uh we see an increase in conversion, which is great. But just generally, I think uh, you know, travel agents just really happy uh that they don't have to uh send emails uh for every time they need to change add a passenger, remove a passenger, when they have to add names, etc. Uh so um yeah, no, it's uh it's been a very uh uh it's been a very positive go live. And you know, as I uh say, I think it's it's really a strong partnership uh and with Nouvel Air, and that's really what we're looking for in every uh in every airline um uh agreement we get into. And every airline we support, we want it to be an a partnership. We don't just want to be another software vendor.
SPEAKER_00That's a good point. So we've mainly talked about this from the perspective of the airline. Um if we think about the perspective of the customer, which as you mentioned is often um a travel agent, do you think more and more travel agents will be looking for this kind of a service from airlines that they've been working with in the past?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, listen, I think it's just frustrating in 2026 to have to rely on emails so much. I mean, if if services, and it's not even so much the actual booking uh I think uh uh the issue with the booking process is fundamentally that they're making decisions with incomplete information. So they're not seeing the whole range of uh flights, they're only going to get the price for one flight, and they've got no idea if they'd flown the day before, the day after, the morning, or the evening, they would have got a uh cheaper rate. But I think the postbooking is is particularly painful because it's not like when you're traveling with you know with your family or you know, in a small in a small, small group of people. I mean, there you've got groups of 30, 40, 50 people, there's gonna be changes. There's gonna be you know people who fall ill and drop out, or there's new people who want to join. There's lots of change um to group bookings, and that having to just go back and forth every time uh via email um is just you know it's just not 2026 anymore. I mean, that's really old school in a way. And uh, you know, I think once the bar is set, uh expectation for travel agents is going to be uh, you know, you manage it that way, or else they're just gonna go, you know, in these competitive markets, they're gonna they're gonna have a strong preference to go uh with a platform which empowers them the most. Um so yeah, I I do think that um it's gonna be a key key factor for uh uh you know how they make decisions and what they recommend to customers going forward.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, when you put it like that, I think it's actually surprising that the current model that you see at most airlines, the traditional way of doing it, has actually persisted as long as it has both from the airline side and also um from what the customer, particularly travel agents, um, are kind of willing to accept in terms of all the admin that's been involved historically.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and there's more you can do to help the travel agents, I mean, uh whether it's from reporting, accounting, uh, and so forth. So that's also really an area of focus for us. But yeah, no, I mean fundamentally I think you know uh the airlines have got away with it because uh many of their competitors haven't done that, it's really a small minority of airlines who who've done any automation around this. But yeah, I think once, you know, once this gets uh gets some momentum in the market, then you know I think it's gonna be demanded of the airlines.
SPEAKER_00So as an airline, if you're looking at tech developments, um, aside from choosing between different vendors for a product, there is also the question of buy versus build. Um, should you be buying an off-the-shelf product from an external vendor or should you build it yourself? Um, particularly in light of the easier development timelines, perhaps now with more um AI resources. Uh you know, what's the what's the case for an airline to buy from groups as opposed to looking to develop something themselves?
SPEAKER_01It's a good question, and it's a question I've given a lot of thought to. Typically, what I see with airlines is they'll develop something in-house, uh, and this could be groups or it could be anything else, and then they'll move on to the next project. Um, and uh whatever that feature was, whether it was groups or other, will be forgotten for the next few years, and then it will maybe come back in a few years' time. And I think that's really the big difference with a platform like ours, is we're improving this on a non-stop basis. Uh, I mean, every week or every other week, we've got a new release. Uh, we're getting you know, we're getting uh customer feedback, we're improving on that. So it's it's a relentless uh you know uh improvement, relentless iterations and improvements on the platform. And you're just not gonna get that. I mean, I think no matter AI or or or what have you, you're just not gonna get that relentless uh improvement across all across all areas. So I think you have to pick and choose as an airline where to make those. But if you find the right partner on the market who is dedicated to uh improving their product week after week, uh I don't think you can go wrong. Uh I mean, I would sign up for that and invest your IT resources in somewhere where you're not gonna find the right partner.
SPEAKER_00What's one thing that you wish Airlines knew about the company groups?
SPEAKER_01I think this element of partnership, um, you know, that we're you know, we're in we're in this uh, you know, to drive your um uh group bookings. I mean, we're not gonna be happy until you know you are uh achieving a doubling of your group sales. We're we're driving your ancillary. We'll make sure that the contractual framework between us uh reflects that, uh, that we only get compensated if we're hitting the results. And um yeah, I mean that's ultimately it. I mean, uh, you know, and this is just going to drive everything else, it's going to drive the innovation, um, you know, the new features, uh, and it'll ensure you know we do the, you know, we we do the heavy lifting.
SPEAKER_00So if anyone is listening to this episode and feeling inspired about group bookings, how can they get in contact with you or the groups team?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so two ways. Um one is go to our website um and you can request a demo there. So the website is groups with a Z, so that's groupz.ai. Um, and the other way is feel free to reach out to me uh personally on LinkedIn. My my last name is long, so you'll uh you'll have to take it from the the show notes or the or the show title. Uh but uh yeah, George Mikelopoulos, founder of Groups.
SPEAKER_00Okay, well thanks, George, and um yeah, best of luck with everything. Thanks again, Garth.