Mark Bergsrud, CEO of Grab: “We are excited to have entered into a partnership with American Airlines to bring our shopping platform to their customers via the American Airlines mobile app.”
Mark Bergsrud, CEO of Grab, interviewed by Ross Falconer.
Travellers today demand a level of control and personalisation that is unprecedented. They have, therefore, embraced the control and ease of use that well-designed mobile tools give them when travelling – right from mobile check-in, through to beacon technology providing location-specific notifications via an airport’s official app.
Since the advent of the smartphone, consumers have spoken loudly and clearly that they want the benefits of mobile commerce from the businesses they engage with. This has contributed to a wave of start-ups in the travel sphere, which continues unabated.
One such start-up is Grab which, put simply, is an open platform that connects travellers with airport services, including restaurants and retailers. Its CEO Mark Bergsrud previously spent 20 years in the airline industry, mostly with Continental. “I have a keen sense of what frequent travellers are looking for, the importance of networks in building traveller loyalty, and how to bring those things together in a great mobile app,” he says. “At Continental Airlines, my team and I pushed hard to launch the first mobile check-in product offered by a US carrier.”
Grab intends to be a disruptor in the airport commercial space. Its mobile ordering platform aggregates content relating to airports’ retail and F&B offers. Travellers can order via their mobile device and collect without waiting in line. The app also offers state-of-the-art indoor maps that include turn-by-turn navigation, the ability to save favourites, and star ratings for purchases.
“We have listened to the needs of frequent travellers and created an open platform that maximises the connections between travellers and airport concessions,” Bergsrud explains. “Travellers want an app that has broad content across all the airports they frequent. Grab is built to aggregate content across the entire industry. The concession industry is very fragmented, and even the largest players will have trouble acquiring customers to their proprietary apps and driving engagement and transactions.”
“An intuitive customer experience”
Mark Bergsrud, CEO of Grab: “We are very pleased with the launch of Grab at both Austin and Atlanta, and are getting enough volume for a thorough test of our platform.”
Grab has been launched at Austin-Bergstrom and Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson airports together with launch partner Delaware North, and initial plans are to continue swift roll-out across Delaware North’s network of 16 airports in the US. The Grab mobile platform is also built to integrate into popular day-of-travel apps, including airport and airline apps. This is a powerful part of its strategy, creating broad distribution of the platform to millions of frequent flyers. “As the network grows, Grab’s capabilities to curate content based on a customer’s path through the airport, their dietary preferences, their previous purchases, and other factors, will become very significant,” Bergsrud comments. “Grab also has the capability to leverage location services and create a contextual relevance that will be appreciated by customers and very useful to our concession partners.”
There are plans for Grab to grow into international markets, including Europe, in the near future. “The more comprehensive the network, the more significant the benefits are to travellers, concession partners and Grab’s integration partners,” Bergsrud adds. “We are excited to have entered into a partnership with American Airlines to bring our shopping platform to their customers via the American Airlines mobile app.”
It is clear from our discussion that Bergsrud has a passion for travel and an appreciation of the transformative power of technology. Connected travellers at Austin and Atlanta have embraced the Grab platform, and Bergsrud believes airports benefit too, as “there is a mounting degree of evidence that the average revenue per order from mobile apps is significantly higher than for purchases made in-store.”
“As the product matures, I believe that airports and airport concessions will physically design their spaces differently to leverage this capability and see another significant increase in revenue. Airport authorities, as the landlords, will see the same benefits as the concessions and see increases in non-aeronautical revenue,” he concludes.
