Is Verified Identity the Missing Link in Airline Direct Booking?

Skift Take Airlines are investing heavily in direct bookings, loyalty programs, and more flexible offer creation. But the bigger opportunity may depend on something more basic: knowing who travelers are, what communities they belong to, and how to recognize them in ways that build lasting relationships. This sponsored content was created in collaboration with a Skift partner. Airlines have spent years trying to bring travelers closer to their own channels. New distribution capability (NDC), more sophisticated retailing, and loyalty investments have all been part of that push. Yet many carriers still face a stubborn problem: A direct booking does not always equal a direct relationship. Airlines may know what a traveler purchased, where they flew, or how much they spent. But that does not always tell them who that traveler is, what they value, or what kind of relationship they want with the brand over time. For carriers competing in a low-margin, highly intermediated market, that distinction is becoming more important. IATA expects airlines to earn just $4.50 in net profit per passenger in 2026, leaving little room for acquisition strategies that fail to create lasting customer value. With such razor-thin margins, airlines need to make every customer relationship more valuable. As NDC adoption accelerates and airlines rebuild their retailing architecture, the decisions they make about how they identify, acknowledge, and reward customers will determine how effectively they can personalize each traveler’s experience. “When we talk about the acquisition funnel for airlines, it is different from what it was years ago,” said Rebecca Grimes, chief revenue officer at SheerID, an identity verification platform that helps brands recognize and engage specific consumer communities. “The next generation of consumers, especially in the airline industry, is more discerning about value for the money and whether the relationship feels transactional or is the beginning of ongoing loyalty.” Airlines Are Paying for Customers They Don’t Own Online travel agencies (OTAs) continue to play an important role in airline distribution, especially for travelers who are comparing prices, schedules, and convenience. But they also shape who owns the customer relationship. OTAs often control the front end of discovery, the comparison experience, and the ongoing communication loop. That can leave airlines with a completed transaction but a weaker understanding of the person behind it. In some cases, airlines may pay commissions on OTA bookings, while the OTA retains control of the customer relationship and future marketing opportunities. “What has been so fascinating with the online travel agencies is that they have created their own loyalty programs,” Grimes said. “Their interest is to own the consumer relationship and build lifecycle marketing that ties the consumer to their brand, not to any specific airline.” OTA experiences are useful because they make it easy to compare fares, schedules, and carriers in one place. But that same convenience can train travelers to see airlines as interchangeable suppliers. A customer may book once, join a loyalty program for a short-term benefit, and then return to the marketplace the next time they fly. For airlines, this can make acquisition more expensive and less durable. A traveler may repeatedly book through an OTA, leaving the airline to pay for the relationship without fully owning it. Why Direct Relationships Matter More Than Ever Airlines already understand the value of direct bookings. Those relationships can reduce distribution costs, create more control over merchandising, and give carriers a better opportunity to sell ancillary products or bundled offers. But direct distribution is only part of the equation. Personalized recognition is what turns a booking channel into something more. If a traveler feels an airline understands their life stage, needs, preferences, and travel patterns, the direct channel becomes a place where their experience improves over time, not just a place to transact. “I want to feel seen as a whole person, not as a revenue opportunity,” Grimes said. “If I’m a student, I still want to travel even if I’m on a budget. If an airline recognizes that by giving me a reduced fare on a last-minute trip where a flight is undersold, or a free checked bag, buying a ticket isn’t just a transaction. It’s a personal invitation that I accept.” That level of personalization depends on more than purchase history. It requires airlines to understand why someone travels, who they travel with, what communities they belong to, and what kind of recognition and experience would feel meaningful. The need for deeper relationships is becoming more urgent because traditional loyalty has its limits. Skift Research found that while loyalty programs influence booking decisions, travelers frequently switch brands based on more immediate needs. Availability was the top reason travelers chose a different brand (55%), followed by price (44%), suggesting that points alone rarely create lasting preference. The Shift From Transactional Loyalty to Identity-Driven Loyalty The next phase of loyalty may depend less on broad rewards and more on verified recognition. Students, military members, first responders, healthcare workers, educators, seniors, and other high-affinity communities can represent valuable audiences for airlines because they share identities, values, and experiences. These groups are often tightly connected, with members actively sharing deals, recommendations, and brand preferences across their communities. Reaching them effectively, however, requires more than assuming identity based on age, behavior, or broad demographic signals. An age-based offer may reach some students, but it can also miss older students, graduate students, or travelers whose needs do not fit neatly into a demographic box. Verifying that a customer is actually a student, or a member of another high-affinity community, gives airlines a consent-driven starting point for building offers around real communities rather than rough proxies. “In the airline industry, belonging to one of these groups is often self-attested,” Grimes said. “A platform like SheerID verifies their student status, the university they attend, and even their major and year of graduation. This verified data gives airlines a solid foundation on which they can build and personalize the relationship.” That verification can help airlines move from one-off acquisition offers to lifecycle strategies. A student may become a graduate, then a young professional, then a business traveler, parent, or member of another community. In one SheerID airline success story, four leading airlines drove more than 846,000 student verifications through audience-specific campaigns, showing how verified identity can support both acquisition and loyalty when the offer is relevant to the traveler. Turning Identity Into a Competitive Advantage Verified identity can help airlines create stronger customer relationships while reducing costs. An airline can offer priority boarding to the military, prevent ineligible customers from taking advantage of the offer, and avoid manually verifying customers at the gate, which makes boarding harder for every customer. Identity can also support benefits that feel personal without simply lowering the fare. Airlines might offer students free checked bags at the start and end of the school year, give military members priority boarding or lounge access, waive seat selection fees for educators, or place an appreciation kit at the seat of a healthcare worker. Beyond the travel experience, identity can power broader marketing activations, including audience-specific sweepstakes, bonus-mile offers, early access to new routes or seat sales, milestone rewards tied to graduations or deployments, community events, and surprise upgrades or thank-you moments. “Creating loyalty doesn’t always need to anchor on a discount,” Grimes said. “Loyalty can be achieved through other experiences like early access to a sale or a moment of recognition to earn lifetime loyalty.” Community-based recognition can also create a multiplier effect. Students, young adults, military families, educators, healthcare workers, and other groups, such as seniors, often share relevant benefits through their own networks. When an offer feels authentic, word of mouth becomes part of the acquisition strategy. What Growth Marketing and Distribution Leaders Should Be Deciding Now As airlines invest in NDC, offer construction, and direct channels, identity should become part of the same strategic conversation. To build more relevant offers, airlines need a verified understanding of who the customer is, not just how they shop. “As you look at your growth plans, ask whether there is anything distinct that can be influenced by engaging a specific audience or community,” Grimes said. “Then focus on how you can collect verified, consent-driven data that enables you to draw these distinctions in a way that supports your business and revenue goals with that audience.” Implementation does not always require a massive transformation. Some airlines may begin with a focused audience campaign or specific offer, such as verifying educators within the booking flow to unlock an exclusive offer on summer travel. Others may integrate verification more deeply into loyalty enrollment or customer profiles, allowing permissioned identity data to flow into CRM and marketing platforms for ongoing personalization and engagement. In either case, the value depends on how the airline uses that verified data to build a longer-term customer relationship. The window to make that decision is narrowing. Over the next 12 to 24 months, as airlines modernize retailing systems and expand NDC-enabled offers, the identity signals they choose to collect now will shape how effectively they can personalize, target, and protect the next generation of airline offers. To explore how SheerID helps airlines recognize travelers at booking, create stronger direct relationships, and deliver more personalized loyalty experiences, click here. This sponsored content was created collaboratively by SheerID and Skift Studio.