At Reservamos SaaS, we spoke with Humberto Candelaria, Commercial and Marketing Coordinator at Roll&Bits, about the significance of revenue management in the bus industry to enhance its profitability and success.
Roll&Bits is a 100% digital ground transportation company that, since 2019, has introduced an innovative and efficient business model, successfully winning over digital travelers by streamlining operational processes to create more appealing travel experiences. Without terminals and with boarding points strategically located in the cities where it operates, Roll&Bits’ digital sales channels provide an opportunity for direct communication with its users.
In Humberto’s words, Roll&Bits, a Reservamos SaaS partner, is described as a tourism tool focused on strengthening people’s mobility between cities by providing a comfortable and secure way to travel. According to Humberto, within the financial sector, the bus industry is one of the most important due to its positioning, driven by digital evolution and its remarkable growth in recent years. This digitization has allowed companies to gain a deeper understanding of travelers’ behavior to tailor their offerings to their needs.
Understanding the digital traveler is crucial today for the success of a bus company. Since the pandemic, we have witnessed how the sector’s evolution, which might have taken five or six years, was accelerated within months. This has led people to seek digital alternatives. Travelers accustomed to visiting a physical office to buy their tickets now make their purchases online. At Roll&Bits, we have created a 100% digital purchasing experience for travelers. Despite opening physical sales points, the majority of people continued to make digital purchases. In our case, 97% of our sales are digital, with only 3% occurring at physical sales points. The benefit of digitization is that it enables us to keep operations running smoothly, positioning us among travelers and adapting to their needs and the current circumstances.
Humberto Candelaria, Commercial and Marketing Coordinator at Roll&Bits.
Effective revenue management strategies with the help of specialized technology
Humberto has specialized in creating pricing and revenue management strategies for the transportation company Roll&Bits. With the assistance of BrainPROS, our Revenue Management system, Humberto monitors purchase anticipation and brand behavior. This allows him to gain a detailed understanding of the occupancy of their units, identify opportunities to offer additional services, monitor the market, and manage the profitability of each journey.
What I like most about my job is that Roll&Bits allows you to be free. With partners who provide tools like BrainPROS, I have the freedom to develop strategies I know will work best for the business. I can experiment and improve every day; if I make a mistake, I learn from it and move forward. With BrainPROS, I can solidify my strategies with greater confidence, reducing the margin of error, and I can delve deeper and visualize various key aspects. This makes my work enjoyable, challenging, and continuously growing.
Humberto Candelaria, Commercial and Marketing Coordinator at Roll&Bits.
Pioneers in dynamic pricing implementation
When asked about effective Revenue Management strategies in the industry based on seasons or demand, Humberto emphasized the importance of monitoring the market and seizing opportunities such as peak seasons, events, or activities that can benefit or impact operations. He also highlighted the significance of analyzing the performance achieved and preparing in advance to avoid any pitfalls to maximize the company’s reach.
As one of the first low-cost ground transportation companies, implementing dynamic pricing helped us boost purchase anticipation, and BrainPROS technology enabled us to monitor traveler interest. This way, we can increase the profitability of low-occupancy schedules and assign higher demand value to better-positioned schedules. Today, our travelers plan and anticipate their trips to gain more benefits, giving us an advantage because we can see high occupancy in our units for peak days and hours from the early days of the week. We make people seek us out more. This allows us to closely control the operation and profitability of each journey.
Humberto Candelaria, Commercial and Marketing Coordinator at Roll&Bits.
Among the allies of Reservamos SaaS, Roll&Bits has been a pioneer in using BrainPROS, our Revenue Management system. This solution has marked a turning point in revenue management and an evolution in the company’s internal operations. Reservamos taught us how to use BrainPROS to have greater control over our pricing strategies. In this process, I have received constant follow-up and guidance from the Reservamos team to make the most of BrainPROS.
The use of BrainPROS has allowed Roll&Bits to optimize and automate internal processes, streamline operations, and perform actions like loading pricing strategies massively and in less time. According to Humberto, before BrainPROS, the pricing load took up to 3 days. Now, with the help of BrainPROS functionalities, it takes only 2 hours, allowing more time for monitoring demand and market behavior. In Humberto’s words: Processes that used to be lengthy and took days to analyze whether they had worked can now be adjusted, and key decisions can be made instantly. With BrainPROS, we can pleasantly surprise travelers and achieve positive internal results. The more information I have at my disposal, the greater my insight and ability to respond quickly and exceed sales targets.
Some of the benefits that BrainPROS has brought to the company’s operations include
The ability to load pricing strategies massively, reducing error margins and operational times.
Access to daily and specific period revenues.
Constant monitoring to assess key metrics performance, such as digital sales, occupancy, and average price tickets.
Opportunities to enhance operations, make agile corrections, and increase the average ticket.
Daily comparisons and historical data from the last 13 months to evaluate short- medium- and long-term strategies.
Setting higher revenue goals and controlling growth to ensure additional income.
The ability to create internal income statements with the help of the Dash Center module integrated into BrainPROS.
In just 11 months, Roll&Bits achieved a +77% growth in its average ticket. Since implementing BrainPROS, the company confidently implemented pricing strategies and can experiment without risks, thanks to its monitoring and adjustment features. For Humberto, BrainPROS has been a continuous learning experience. Every day, they surprise me with new functionalities or tools that make my job easier.
Will dynamic pricing be a trend in the bus sector?
Regarding the current challenges in revenue management in the bus industry, Humberto believes that dynamic pricing strategies are the way to maintain a competitive advantage. In addition, digital sales channels allow them to put themselves in the traveler’s shoes, establish direct communication, and make a difference. Roll&Bits is committed to innovation and continuous improvement with the help of technology: We are a young team that understands the needs of travelers. Every day, we research and delve into the needs of travelers to ensure better service.
Effective revenue management allows a company like Roll&Bits to maintain both maximum and minimum prices without affecting the profitability of each journey or the traveler’s wallet. It enables them to analyze their competition and the market, offer attractive dynamic prices to travelers, and ensure a competitive edge. For Humberto, the future of Roll&Bits lies in the company’s ability to take travelers to the very heart of cities at a very low cost. We see great potential in taking travelers where they want to be. For example, we are working to take travelers to their favorite events, from their hometown to the venue, non-stop, pick them up, and return them home, easily, efficiently, and safely.
Future outlook on revenue management in the bus industry
Regarding the future of Revenue Management for bus companies, Humberto recommends that companies adapt to new technologies and changes. Today, travelers seek the best deals and opportunities, and companies need to be prepared to meet that need. The only way to do this is by daring to innovate. Tools like BrainPROS help us grow our businesses, broaden our vision, and provide significant opportunities against the competition. Through the implementation of dynamic pricing, we can enhance the loyalty of our travelers, pamper them, and adapt to what they are looking for. There’s no better traveler than the one who recommends you by word of mouth.
Roll&Bits is a company that entered the technology market at just the right time. With the assistance of specialized technology and the guidance of Reservamos SaaS, it has built a top-tier company with efficient service through its digital sales channels: its website and mobile application, which ensure simple and secure purchases for travelers. They also offer innovative service during boarding. In Humberto’s words: We establish direct communication with travelers and listen to their needs, making us unique in the sector. We rely on our satisfaction surveys to identify growth opportunities, such as new routes and boarding points. We investigate every request from our travelers and constantly seek the common good for all.
Unveiling the latest UX innovations in our partner’s eCommerce.
User Experience (UX) is fundamental to the efficiency and success of an eCommerce platform. For bus companies, this aspect is no exception. Today’s digital travelers seek convenience, agility, and security when purchasing their tickets online. An intuitive user interface, a straightforward search process, and smooth navigation translate into traveler satisfaction and, ultimately, increased conversions.
Optimizing UX in an eCommerce platform not only simplifies the purchasing process but also leaves a positive impression on users, encouraging them to return and strengthening their loyalty to bus companies.
At Reservamos SaaS, our development and product team consistently work on initiatives, features, and updates that assist bus companies in providing an optimal digital purchasing experience. Recently, the development team completely revamped the design of search filters in our partner’s eCommerce platforms, significantly enhancing the visualization, selection, and organization of categories, schedules, and travel options, including direct and non-stop routes, as well as pet-friendly travel availability. This results in a much smoother and efficient user experience.
Furthermore, we introduced the “Early Booking Discount” feature in the “Trip Details” link within the search results of our partner’s eCommerce platforms. This offers travelers the option to access reduced fares and encourages advance trip planning.
Through each innovation developed by Reservamos SaaS, we drive the strengthening of our partner’s digital channels to ensure agile, optimal, and secure purchasing experiences. A good user experience not only enhances traveler satisfaction but also maximizes revenue and competitiveness in the land transportation industry, becoming a key factor in the success of companies in this sector.
Driven by the mission to digitize ground transportation, Reservamos has developed a technological ecosystem capable of connecting millions of travelers in a more convenient way.
Reservamos is a Mexican travel tech company, founded in 2014 under the vision of its founders Sebastián Gómez, Andrés Sucre, and Adrián Cuadros, with the goal of driving the digitalization of the bus sector and enhancing the online purchasing experience for travelers, primarily in the LatAm region.
Upon realizing that the e-commerce platforms of companies were underutilized while long lines persisted at bus terminals, Andrés, Sebastián, and Adrián decided to develop specialized technology to strengthen their digital sales channels. With the help of specialized technology, they set out to transform the way bus tickets are sold online and adapt this sector to the new needs of digital travelers.
The Bridge of Communication Between Travelers and the Bus Sector
Reservamos.com is the first major digitalization effort in the bus sector. This platform emerged during a 3-day Hackathon and became the company’s first line of business, leading its founders to discover their mission of digitalizing ground transportation in Mexico.
In 2015, the company achieved its first milestone when Oscar Salazar, Co-Founder and CTO of UBER, decided to invest in Reservamos as an angel investor, along with other renowned professionals. Later, in mid-2016, Reservamos received its first investment round from Thayer Ventures, a leading venture capital firm primarily focused on investing in new travel technology startups with worldwide recognition.
Continuing this growth, in 2017, Reservamos was selected as a Startup Endeavor, and in 2018, it was recognized as one of the Top 25 Travel Startups by Skift, a specialized site in the international travel industry.
Today, Reservamos.com is the leading platform for the sale of ground transportation tickets in Mexico, offering travelers the most comprehensive and straightforward experience of purchasing tickets at the most convenient prices.
With over 85 transport lines, 1,000 available destinations, and 3,000 active routes, Reservamos.com provides the widest range of ground travel options, including air and connecting travel, as well as car rentals and hotel bookings in partnership with AVASA (Hertz, Thrifty, Firefly) and Booking.com, respectively. Thanks to over 1.5 million visits across all its versions (desktop, mobile, and app), Reservamos.com has positioned itself as the most relevant platform in the travel and ground travel segment for the middle class in Mexico, with a particular focus on the young traveling population.
The Technological Ally for Achieving Digital Success
Due to its success in the market and the acceptance of early travelers, in 2018, Reservamos expanded its offering to develop exclusive solutions focused on the bus sector, leading to the creation of a new business line called Reservamos SaaS, which has become the technological partner of bus companies in Latin America. The technological infrastructure of Reservamos SaaS focused on the B2B business, is designed to be the digital ecosystem for any bus company, offering solutions and tools that help businesses optimize their digital sales channels and revenue and operations management. Its goal is to support more bus companies in strengthening their digital presence, enhancing the purchasing experience for digital travelers, and driving innovation and growth in the sector.
The Reservamos SaaS Ecosystem:
eCommerce – The eCommerce platform is technology tailored to the bus company’s digital channel, providing a high conversion rate, an optimized purchase funnel, and a user-friendly and secure interface and user experience.
Apps – Custom app development for each bus company, with the features available from eCommerce and access to various management tools. With ratings of over 4.5 stars in digital stores.
BrainPROS – Revenue Management system that strengthens the performance and operations of bus companies. Through its monitoring and analysis modules, it generates smart pricing recommendations to optimize revenue.
Competitor Monitor – A web-based data science tool that allows you to visualize and analyze market behavior to make better pricing strategies and inventory optimization decisions.
Reservamos SaaS technology has led to a 4X growth in digital sales for partner bus companies through their eCommerce platforms and mobile apps. With this technology, companies in the sector have achieved payment acceptance rates above 84%, with an average chargeback rate of 0.3% and a +60% increase in conversion rates. In addition, it provides an innovative alternative that allows companies to stay up-to-date and aligned with the needs of travelers, who increasingly demand better digital shopping experiences that are agile, effective, and secure. In 2022 alone, Reservamos SaaS partners had more than 50 million visitors on their digital channels. This is nearly the total population of São Paulo and Mexico City combined!
Today, Reservamos SaaS provides technology to the most important passenger land transport brands in Mexico, the United States, Colombia, and Brazil. Its vision is to lead innovation in the bus sector throughout Latin America and bring technology that allows companies to lead digital transformation within their operational areas and maintain control of their businesses in an optimized and growth-assured manner.
Solutions for Corporate Travelers
This business unit of Reservamos focuses on addressing administrative and management needs related to the transportation and activities of corporate partners and the events industry. Through a portfolio of comprehensive and customized solutions, this concierge service helps companies achieve their business objectives, reducing costs associated with travel planning.
Among its services are:
Route management.
Booking and purchase of bus and airplane tickets.
Hotel reservations.
Transportation logistics for events and conferences.
Rental of vans, sprinter vans, and buses.
Private chauffeured transportation.
What makes them unique:
Having a team of dedicated customer service executives capable of providing peace of mind, confidence, and assistance during any corporate journey.
Ability to maintain multiple open and flexible communication channels regarding schedules.
Detailed service information is provided via email and online.
Streamlining procedures with a single report and invoice.
Offering comprehensive customer care, ensuring continuous service, and guaranteeing constant uptime, even in case of incidents.
Expert Voices That Have Become Advisors, Guides, and Investors
Reservamos SaaS has the support of an Advisory Board with experience in various industries and the highest international recognition, which are essential to the company’s vision of becoming the leading provider of travel technology for the bus sector.
Reservamos is the leading travel technology provider that helps bus companies connect with new digital travelers to provide them with a smarter, dynamic, flexible, secure, and efficient shopping experience through solutions that support and drive transformation and growth in the bus, travel, and tourism sectors.
It’s time to take the lead and accelerate your strategies with the help of BrainPROS.
Can you imagine having a command center from which you can visualize your market and the progress of your strategies? With the help of our technology, you can increase your revenue and maintain a high level of competitiveness, all from one place.
BrainPROS, our Revenue Management system, features a module called Inventory. Here, you can see all the configurations active in the routes and terminals you’ve set up in the system for tracking, as well as the behavior of your monitored competitors.
BrainPROS Inventory is like your command center. It displays routes with icons that highlight configured actions and modules you’ve activated in BrainPROS. For example, if you have the Competition Monitor activated on a route to track a competitor’s behavior and performance, an icon indicating this will be displayed on that route. Similarly, another icon will appear when you have configured alerts about your competition. There is one icon for each module: Competition Monitor, Alerts, and Pricing Strategy.
The Inventory Module also displays
A summary, including the number of routes configured in BrainPROS.
The routes and competitors that are being monitored.
Information about the configured pricing strategies.
Based on data science, BrainPROS provides valuable insights for better decision-making, optimizing your operations, and increasing company revenue.
Incorporating specialized technology in the bus sector to connect with more travelers digitally allows access to the analysis of the generated data to delve into user behavior on your own online sales channels, thereby identifying opportunities to enhance competitiveness.
Having control over ticket sales on your own website and access to visitor behavior data in the sales funnel provides valuable insights for creating user acquisition strategies, improving the user experience, crafting personalized marketing campaigns, and optimizing routes and schedules to offer more travel options. Understanding this type of information and combining it with the right metrics tells you whether your efforts are meeting your business objectives.
However, in the land transport sector, online sales have been dominated by marketplaces that drive traffic to their websites and process purchases for multiple bus companies, making behavioral data and metrics unknown to bus companies now trying to regain control of sales on their own websites.
That’s why in this article, we share the metrics and key concepts you should be aware of to create better commercial strategies for online sales. Delving into this kind of information will allow you to make more informed decisions, optimize routes and schedules, and personalize the traveler’s experience.
Furthermore, it facilitates the identification of market trends and changes, allowing companies to remain competitive in a constantly evolving digital environment. By improving operational efficiency, reducing costs, and increasing revenue, this technology becomes a key accelerator for sustainable success in the land transport industry.
Hence the importance of understanding the main eCommerce concepts and making the most of the available information and data 24 hours a day. In this article, we will explore ten essential concepts and their relevance to the business.
Sales Funnel
The sales funnel represents the process a user follows from the moment they visit the website, show interest in a route and schedule, select it, and complete a purchase. Understanding this journey allows you to optimize the sales process.
Traffic
It is the number of users who interact with either the website or mobile application. This traffic represents the flow of potential travelers who explore route offerings, view schedules, and prices, and can become bus ticket buyers. High traffic is essential for the success of an eCommerce platform. Having access to key metrics allows you to create marketing campaigns that attract users who intend to travel, aiming to increase conversion rates.
Interest in Home
It is the homepage of the eCommerce platform. In this initial stage of the purchasing journey, it is possible to track various essential data to understand the origin and behavior of visitors. This includes information about the geolocation of users, tracking of marketing campaigns that attracted the user, identification of referring domains, the preferred search engine of users, and data at the country and regional levels. All of this data is crucial for analyzing and optimizing the performance of online user acquisition campaigns.
Search Engine
Allows visitors to select travel details such as origin and destination, travel date, ticket type, seat selection, passenger information, and payment method selection. There are different steps to complete a purchase depending on business rules. In this part, providing a good user experience is essential, streamlining the process between each step to avoid errors that may cause users to drop off.
Purchase Attempt
Displays options for schedules and service levels available on the selected route. Here, you can analyze when a user performs a search to determine the days of the week or periods of the month when searches are conducted. Additionally, it identifies the most popular days for return trips on a specific route and measures the average travel duration. By combining various reports and data, such as the most sought-after routes and days, you gain a deeper understanding of user behavior, enabling more informed and strategic decision-making.
Passengers Created
Refers to the moment when a user selects a schedule and proceeds to choose their seat during the purchase process. It allows tracking routes with the most purchase attempts in a specific period, as well as visualizing the days and hours when most purchases are made for a specific route. Additionally, it is possible to obtain information about future purchase attempts for a route during a specific time and hour. This provides the opportunity for more precise analysis and strategic planning of the bus fleet, as well as taking additional measures to attract more users if high demand is observed during a particular time.
Payment Attempt
Refers to the stage where users provide personal information such as name, last name, and email to create a passenger profile. This section allows for determining which routes travelers who frequently attempt to make purchases originate from. Calculating the number of passengers included in a single transaction is also possible. This metric can be segmented by route and schedule, providing detailed information about purchase attempts and the number of tickets in each, essential for demand analysis and strategic planning.
Purchase Completed
Indicates that the payment process has been successfully completed, and the traveler has acquired their digital tickets. This metric allows for evaluating demand on different routes and schedules. Additionally, it is possible to track the use of discount codes to determine how many have been redeemed in each purchase and on which specific routes. This facilitates tracking the impact of promotions. Moreover, it allows identifying how many tickets have been purchased for round trips compared to single tickets, which is valuable for encouraging round-trip ticket purchases and increasing the average ticket price per purchase.
Conversion
Refers to when a user successfully completes a transaction and acquires a bus ticket or another related service, such as booking a trip. Conversion is a key indicator of success in eCommerce since it represents the ultimate goal of the company: turning visitors into future travelers. Tracking and optimizing conversion rates are essential to improving the profitability and performance of an eCommerce platform.
Cohorts
Used to create groups of users with similar characteristics, such as repeat buyers, inactive users, and users who do not complete purchases, among others. These metrics help tailor marketing and remarketing strategies and foster traveler loyalty.
Knowing and analyzing these concepts provides a competitive advantage. With constant access to valuable data, any bus company can optimize its strategies and offer travelers a streamlined, simple, and secure purchasing experience.
Prepare to take your business to the next level in the digital world!
