Christopher Staab, a partner at airlineinformation.org, has asked me to give a keynote speech in London to a bunch of airline executives “on the ‘consumer point-of-view’ on airline fees and other issues.”
This followed a story of mine on ‘The pro’s and cons of a la carte air fares’
that OAG.com took from RogerandRandy.com.
I’ll keep you all posted. Here is the correspondence so far:
From: Christopher Staab (cstaab@airlineinformation.org
Sent: 12 January 2009 04:33:38
To: Roger Collis (rcollis25@hotmail.com)
Hi Roger,
Great points! We are making progress towards finding a venue for our cocktail. We are shooting for the week 23 March. We have asked several large companies to lend us the meeting space since we are paying for our travel and the liquor/snacks from our pockets and not charging a registration fee, because we are trying to demonstrate to the airlines that in times of recession, smart companies get out and meet their customers more, rather than less.
And, the guy who made the comments on your email will be there. He is a sales manager for Cathay Pacific in London.
Will keep you posted as soon as I have a date for the cocktail.
Cheers,
Chris
On Jan 11, 2009, at 6:44 AM, Roger Collis wrote:
chris,
yes indeed!
and i think that airlines have done themselves harm by ‘devaluing’ the integrity of their high-priced their premium cabins by using them as marketing devices - indiscriminate, crass upgrading, for example.
i believe ‘cabin’ policy needs to be reviewed - especially in the light of a la carte pricing.
i plan to include all this in my talk to your people in london.
i’m looking forward to meeting you all.
cheers,
roger
To: rcollis25@hotmail.com
From: cstaab@airlineinformation.org
Subject: comments on your points
Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2009 17:25:11 -0500
Hi Roger,
I forwarded your comments from the other day about airlines not understanding their customers to a friend of mine who works in corporate sales for a major airline in the UK. He agreed with you. Here’s what he had to say. (See below.) This is an example of how this blindness to who their customers are is reducing airline revenues in a time when they can not afford it!
Cheers,
Chris
He makes an interesting point and gets at an issue I have been trying to champion internally. We do segment Leisure and Corporate customers to the point that we assume all corporate travellers are equal. He is right - they are not. For example, I have one client who would never (currently anyway) consider taking a ticket with restrictions or in Economy - so the traditional fully flexible (high value and cost) business class fare model works fine. However, I have been speaking to a company recently that spends £500 000 out of the UK to a point in Asia, all in economy and all restricted - i.e. they are very price focused. This is fine, although the business is not necessarily high yield, it is high value and high volume and any airline would be pleased to get the business. However, we, nor any other carrier as I see it, have a decent fare proposal/package to offer this business. Therefore we see them use a random mix of various airlines. If we had an offering that would help the customer leverage their spend in return for commitment to us whilst offering a more restricted economy fare offering, bearing in mind there must be 1000s of businesses like this (in some ways yours but on a smaller scale I guess), then we really would be talking about driving incremental revenue. Right now, simply we don’t. It is either a ‘leisure’ customer or ‘corporate’. Carriers seem blind to a potentially high value segment.
chris,
And there is no shortage of ‘high-end’ leisure travelers among the denizens of the first-class cabins.’
i look forward to hearing from you.
cheers,
roger
Christopher Staab (cstaab@airlineinformation.org
07 January 2009
Roger Collis (rcollis25@hotmail.com)
Hi Roger,
Excellent News! I will keep you posted on a date. We are going to ask AIG or another travel insurance provider if they can lend us an office for the purposes of this airline industry educational/networking cocktail.
I think your point below drives to an important point that you might make to the airlines in your keynote: “Do airlines really understand their customers?” I am doing a lot of research right now into how companies have successfully steered their way through past recessions and one of the key factors for doing so has been understanding your customers better than your competitors (which from the airline point of view in this case is everything from the driving, rail, staying home, video-conferencing, etc.) Sadly, I think this is just one facet demonstrating how most airlines are not running their businesses following the practices of winning companies.
I will keep you posted of possible dates for the cocktail ASAP (once the insurance guys are back from Winter holidays.)
Cheers,
Chris
On Jan 2, 2009, at 2:08 PM, Roger Collis wrote:
From: cstaab@airlineinformation.org
Subject: Re: What will you be ‘First’ to do this year?
Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2009 15:33:11 -0500
To: rcollis25@hotmail.com
Hi Roger,
Same to you! As the economic situation is so poor for airlines and consequently airline managers have very little travel budget, we are planning an evening cocktail (or maybe two) in London in March or April for airline managers with some serious speakers and conversation, as well as high-level airline industry networking. This will be part of a series of free airline industry educational/networking cocktails that we will organize in various cities.
What has caused us to do this is the ominous “travel bans” in effect at many airlines. I personally strongly disagree with airlines imposing “travel bans” on their employees, as I think it’s the wrong message to send to their customers to effectively say: “Travel with us, but our own employees don’t travel.” If all companies take the airline lead an impose these “travel bans,” then airlines will have no business traffic and will go bankrupt! I also believe that in hard economic times, it’s even more important to get out and meet your customers and build relationships and airlines should be the first ones to set this example. It’s to that effect of setting the example and getting out there that we are planning a cocktail(s) in LON in March or April. The cocktail will start in the evening (6 or 7 PM) and feature 2 or 3 speakers on topics relevant to the airlines in the credit crisis. One issue will certainly be a-la-carte fees and another will be engaging your customers now to ensure that you have customers when the economy improves.
Would you be interested to give a 30-minute keynote address (it will be very informal) on the consumer point-of-view on fees and other issues? (Basically, it could be anything you want to tell the airline managers.)
We are pinning down a date as we are waiting for a corporate sponsor to lend us a conference room in central London. With a free meeting facility, we will then supply the drinks and snacks, which will enable us to make the event free of charge to the airline managers. (Who are broke!) I think many senior airliners will be happy to engage in high-level industry networking, which they are doing less of currently due to these “travel bans.” I also think they would like to hear from you on the consumer perspective!
If interested, please let me know and I will try to work a date acceptable to you.
Cheers,
Chris
On Jan 1, 2009, at 1:44 PM, Roger Collis wrote:
WISHING YOU A VINTAGE 2009
Roger Collis: Columnist, Author, Broadcaster
Introducing Roger Collis for OAG
Roger Collis has earned world-wide recognition as a business travel guru through his weekly column, ‘The Frequent Traveler,’ in the International Herald Tribune; and as a contributing travel columnist for the New York Times.
It is great to welcome him on board at OAG, and we look forward to sharing his stories with you. You can read his first stories for OAG here:
i’d be delighted to give a keynote talk in london to a group of airline people on traveler issues. a la carte fees is a central issue at the heart of understanding travelers’ needs; an example of what ‘full-service’ network carriers can and have learned from no-frills carriers. as i wrote recently:
‘The travel trade is wrong to assume that ‘business’ and ‘leisure’ travelers have a different set of needs and behavior. As I have often pointed out, neither category is monolithic; people travel in raft of different ‘modes,’ different frames of mind, with different needs, motivations, priorities and prejudices, depending on why we’re going and where we are headed. Business travelers may range from ‘hard-core’ (clinching a deal) to ‘soft-core’ (attending a conference; combining business with pleasure). Corporate travelers have deeper pockets than others; individual and small-business travelers, for whom travel expenses are their bottom line, may share budget priorities with back-packers and package tourists.