The struggle between privacy and personalisation shows no signs of being resolved, as another survey shows that passengers are reluctant to share data but still want an airline to know who they are.

YouGov was commissioned by customer engagement software company Pegasystems to ask British passengers about their digital habits and preferences.

The survey of more than 2000 Brits included business and leisure passengers with the majority of participants (83%) having flown primarily for leisure.

The majority of passengers (68%) still prefer to transact their trip via the airline website, though only 33% described the airline website as “very helpful” and an additional 54% described websites as fairly helpful.

While 28% of British passengers said they use airline apps, 44% rank apps as a “very helpful” service and 47% as fairly helpful. Additionally, 23% classify digital apps as essential.

Text notifications also performed well, with 38% of those surveyed describing text messages as “very helpful” and 50% describing them as “fairly helpful”.

Another 13% of passengers said they are less likely to fly an airline that doesn’t offer a digital app as part of the service.

Passengers prioritize information such as luggage location (65%) as well as geo-location services such as measuring the distance to gate from their location at the airport terminal (63%). Both baggage tracking and airport terminal location were highly ranked as loyalty builders; 23% of those surveyed said they would be highly likely to book again with an airline that recognized them when they arrived at the airport and offered location services to the gate and 25% said they were very likely to fly with an airline that offered baggage tracking alerts immediately upon arrival.

Another 43% wanted airlines to remember their personal interests and preferences when they travel.

However, there is still a high degree of skepticism about personalisation too. A majority of those surveyed (73%) said they would not be willing to give airlines more personal data in exchange for personalised services.

Also, 42% view apps as benefiting airlines more than passengers, by saving airlines administrative costs.

Related reading from tnooz:

UK airline pax less satisfied, despite better search and booking processes (Aug 2018)

UK pax share their thoughts on AI and VR applications in airport lounges (Aug 2018)