Delta Reveals That The Real Business Behind Free Wi-Fi Is Monetizing Your Whole Travel Day

Ranjan Goswami, Delta Air Lines Chief Marketing and Product Officer, laid out how the airline plans to monetize the travel day in an investor talk at the TD Cowen 10th Annual Future of the Consumer Conference on Wednesday.

Delta is no longer describing loyalty as the SkyMiles frequent flyer program. It is pitching itself as a ‘logged-in consumer platform’ that ties together their app, website, wifi, and seatback screens with Amex for payments, Uber for mobility, Starbucks coffee, Airbnb stays, and Paramount, YouTube, New York Times, Fox, and Amazon for content, news and shopping. And their AI ‘Delta Concierge’ will help tie it together. They want to turn every onboard and travel day touch point into a logged-in marketing channel.

That’s what free wifi is actually about, and why they a Starlink deal didn’t work for them. They want to control the journey. 50% of passengers log in, and 30% engage in Delta content rather than going off on their own online journey, according to Goswani.

Here’s some of what he shared:

• Delta has more than 168,000 seatback screens.

• Only 50% of Delta’s widebody fleet has business class suites, despite introducing them ten years ago

• There are 9 million Delta American Express cardmembers

• 4 million people have linked their SkyMiles and Starbucks accounts, and 2 million have linked Delta and Uber.

• This year they’ve ” had 65 days of over $100 million in cash sales in our direct channels of the app and [website]. Last year, that was only 19.”

Amazon LEO is not just about connectivity. It is about shopping, gaming, content, cloud, and commerce. They did 500 planes because that’s the number that are coming into the fleet plus legacy aircraft ‘coming off contract.’

Goswami said two new Delta Sync initiatives are coming in July – one with an existing long-time partner and one with a brand-new partner, and then added: “you’re going to see us do more in lodging.” That could mean more Airbnb integration, hotel partnerships, or vacation packages.

They’re also fully rolling out their AI assistant next month.

Delta Concierge is really exciting because it can take what are more complex transactions that take a lot of back and forth and turn them into natural language ways for you to kind of transact with us.

So right now, 5% of our app users are included in the beta on Delta Concierge. And we just launched rebooking and cancel as opportunities, and it’s working really well, getting really good feedback on that. Next month, that 5% will go to 100% — and so you’re going to see us really leaning in here where that tool.

Because this is Delta, there’s a lot of overclaiming. Goswami says “No one had done free Wi-Fi” before Delta, but JetBlue had it long before Delta did. He suggests Delta was first with business class suites with doors, but both Qatar and JetBlue had them before Delta. This is Delta’s Chief Marketing Officer, after all. I assume he believes everything that he says at the time he’s saying it.