INTERNATIONAL. Leading digital travel retail solutions provider AOE has announced the launch of Omnevo, a new company that aims to deliver fresh ancillary revenue models in food & beverage, retail and experiences for airlines, airports and rail operators. It was born from the recent merger of AOE with catering management and supply chain expert SHIFTEO.
AOE claimed that Omnevo is “the world’s first fully modular digital solution suite to provide end- to-end, vendor-agnostic digital retailing and catering management, addressing everything from front-end customer experience such as personalisation, choice and fulfilment to complex operational challenges, including logistics, warehousing, crew and ePOS.”
Solutions can range from the small Minimum Viable Product-approach – such as the add-on of F&B pre-order to reduce waste and weight – to full omnichannel retailing solutions.
The launch of Omnevo, said AOE, is designed to provide operators in the mobility and hospitality industries with new paths to optimising their post-COVID ancillary revenue recovery.
It said that the combination of the collapse in travel markets and the accelerated evolution of consumers’ touchless digital behaviour over the past year has inflicted a ‘perfect storm’ on operators, hitting ancillary revenue streams and magnifying the declining effectiveness of traditional revenue models.
“Omnevo is all about giving our customers freedom through new levels of control, efficiency and versatility” – Omnevo COO Peter Coelho
The new company’s name is derived from a synergy of the words ‘omnichannel’ and ‘evolution’, expressing a commitment “to drive a new digital performance standard for the mobility and hospitality sectors worldwide”.
Omnevo CEO Michael Raasch explained: “Omnevo is an effective, holistic and, above all, flexible response to the harsh new travel market realities and is a radically different product approach to that of our parent company, AOE.
“Everyone in the mobility and hospitality sectors understands that the global crisis and the shift in consumer behaviour sets a challenging new paradigm in revenue creation. Everyone also realises that the post-COVID answer is undoubtedly digital. However, under severe financial pressures, many are unsure how to make that happen – so we’ve created a clear, powerful, cost- effective solution that is ‘off the shelf’ and can be implemented quickly.”
Kian Gould, CEO of AOE and Chairman of the Board of Omnevo, added: “We’ve achieved this innovative solution by combining the proven expertise of AOE and SHIFTEO in a unique, success-based model that meets the shifting needs of the market, providing something never available before – holistic, vendor-agnostic, end-to-end provision across the whole journey.
“Our modular solution suite gives operators of any size the agility to easily and rapidly adapt to market needs, ultimately achieving a full omnichannel platform with minimal investment and shared risk, if and when desired. We’re confident that our model can not only deliver new levels of customer experiences and drive new revenue streams but can also achieve greatly improved operational efficiency – all from low start-up costs.
“The fundamental shift that has been so significantly accelerated in 2020 is driving the evolution of the end-customer’s digital behaviour forward by ten years in just six months, making traditional ancillary revenue models increasingly unstable, even in a recovery. Omnevo has responded by innovating at scale to give the industry the capacity and agility to evolve with the market and the flexibility to react quickly to changes.
“The current crisis may well be the tipping point that finally convinces everyone in the industry that digital is the path they need to take, and that classic retailing, catering and operator models are in the past.”
Omnevo COO Peter Coelho outlined the enhanced logistical and operational capabilities that the new company provides. “At its heart, Omnevo is all about giving our customers freedom through new levels of control, efficiency and versatility,” he said. “We provide a fully vertically-integrated solution portfolio that frees them from the traditional model’s barriers – such as minimal choice of suppliers and its restrictive focus on route, destination and contracts – enabling them to re-define both their performance and their end-customer experience.
“These new efficiencies, achieved particularly through focusing on pre-travel selection, purchasing and decision-making, are further amplified by the absolutely remarkable gains achievable across sustainability elements, such as stock management, food waste and last-mile delivery. Simply, this model has been designed so that the more comprehensively you embed it, the greater the range of performance benefits can be achieved across every area of your business.”
*Watch out for an extensive interview by Martin Moodie with Kian Gould and Michael Raasch on their ambitions for Omnevo, coming shortly.
