Press Release

Nexoya brings AI to aviation: ITA Airways, part of the Lufthansa Group, records up to 58.63 percent more bookings for short-haul flights

Nexoya’s AI-based forecasting model optimizes advertising budgets based on actual flight demand within a defined time period. The initial results showed significant performance improvements across the portfolio of 20 pilot routes.

Zurich and Berlin, September 15, 2026 – Nexoya, a technology company specializing in AI-powered cross-channel marketing optimization and automation, has developed a custom forecasting model for ITA Airways, Italy’s leading national airline and part of the Lufthansa Group, to optimize digital advertising campaigns.The project was carried out in collaboration with JAKALA, ITA Airways’ partner for the strategy, planning, and optimization of media investments aimed at digital sales. ITA Airways operates more than 700 routes and runs nearly 200 performance-driven digital marketing campaigns across 25 countries, which until now have relied mainly on bookings and revenue. While these are fundamental metrics, they aren’t always sufficient, since a booking doesn’t automatically translate into actual use of a service. For an airline, it’s crucial to predict when passengers will actually travel — after all, only customers who have actually flown generate value. The result: up to 58.63 percent more bookings for short-haul flights and an average increase of 8.56 percent across all optimized routes. ITA Airways is now planning to gradually roll the model out across its entire network of more than 700 routes.

The model developed by Nexoya analyzes demand patterns, seasonal effects, and booking behavior for each individual route. Based on this data, it forecasts future demand across different time horizons, ranging from short-term bookings for departures within 30 days, which are the primary focus of the optimization, to seasonal bookings made more than 90 days in advance. Using these forecasts, the platform automatically and dynamically allocates media budgets across the various channels and routes, allowing ITA Airways to invest more precisely and effectively in its digital marketing campaigns.

Forecasts aligned with current travel behavior

The project’s success is built in particular on the strategic use of the airline’s first-party data. The algorithm links sales data with data from flights actually operated, generating precise booking forecasts. The model is also updated with new data several times a month, ensuring that forecasts stay aligned with travelers’ current behavior and the latest market conditions.

Pilot project drives more bookings across all flights

The first few months of applying the model to a portfolio of 20 pilot routes confirmed the validity of the new approach. During this test phase, bookings for short-haul flights rose by up to 58.63 percent, with an average increase of 8.56 percent across all the flights examined. Nexoya’s forecasting model determines, for each individual route, the trend between the date a flight is booked and when the service is actually operated, informing the algorithms as to which routes should receive greater investment based on the actual flight targets set by ITA Airways.

Rollout planned across the entire route network

Based on these results, ITA Airways now plans to gradually extend Nexoya’s predictive model across its entire network of more than 700 routes, with the goal of extending the model to the airline’s performance-driven digital sales activities and further optimizing the allocation of media investment in support of its commercial goals.

Beyond the results in terms of bookings, the collaboration with Nexoya has also given ITA Airways unprecedented visibility into demand dynamics and the performance of individual routes.

Marco Hochstrasser, Co-Founder and CEO of Nexoya, says: “This project shows how Nexoya can deliver concrete results even in complex settings like the airline industry, where there are many variables to manage. The collaboration with JAKALA and ITA Airways has also been excellent from the very start, confirming that the best results come when technology, agency, and brand truly work in synergy.”

Other industries can benefit from the new approach

The ITA Airways use case highlights a challenge faced across many industries where a booking doesn’t automatically equate to actual use of a service. Online travel agencies, rail companies, hotels, and ticketing platforms face the same structural challenge and can likewise apply the data-driven approach developed for ITA Airways.

Image material

The process overview shows how the Nexoya platform’s AI-based cross-channel attribution and optimization works (Graphic: Nexoya).
Download: www.nexoya.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Nexoya-Unified-AI-platform-visualization.png

About Nexoya

Marketing analytics company Nexoya Ltd., headquartered in Zurich, Berlin, and Milan, has been delivering automated analytics for digital marketing to mid-sized and large enterprises since 2018 — user-friendly and privacy-compliant. Powered by machine learning, the “nexoya Marketing Analytics” SaaS platform optimizes multi-channel marketing campaigns: the solution aggregates metrics from various channels such as Google Ads, Meta, or LinkedIn, presents them in a clear overview, and handles metric monitoring. Based on the collected data and using artificial intelligence (predictive analytics), Nexoya then optimizes campaign budgets. This frees marketing teams from routine operational tasks, simplifies automated, data-driven decision-making, and cuts marketing costs by up to 30 percent. Nexoya collects only non-personalized data, stored in certified Swiss data centers. Customers include well-known companies such as Yuh, Generali, Swisscom, and Zürcher Kantonalbank (ZKB) in Switzerland; DA Direkt and Enercity in Germany; and Italo Treno, Facile, and Scholl in Italy. www.nexoya.com

Press contact
Sabrina Ortmann, Nexoya
Tel.: +49 30 54909240
Email: press@nexoya.com