Placing the customer at the centre of the travel experience by every player in the journey value chain, is vital in a world where customer expectations are changing and businesses are having to find innovative and disruptive ways of standing out and retaining their portion of the market.
This was the central theme of the 2019 Barsa Summit (Board of Airline Representatives of South Africa), hosted on February 28, which was orientated around innovation, disruption and collaboration.
“We need to deliver integrated experiences for the traveller, linking players in the tourism value chain,” said SA Minister of Tourism, Derek Hanekom. “This requires every player to work together. Through this, we can truly improve the tourism experience, benefiting us all as we see more and more happy tourists. And more tourists mean more opportunities and jobs.
“We need to up the levels of day-to-day collaboration to drive new markets, destination growth and new destinations,” continued the Minister. “Players need to collaborate on marketing and promotions, and lobby for a more conducive environment for tourism. We need to identify ways to collaborate so we can stimulate new areas of innovation and disruption.”
Airlines in the eyes of passengers
Michi Messner, Vice Chairman of Barsa, said: “Customers should be your core asset: you focus on what the customer’s needs are. Technology is changing how customers interact with individual brands. If you look at non-traditional competitors – they are now becoming competitors.” Google, for example, is innovating and expanding its footprint, says Messner. They never used to play in the aviation space, but now they are.
President of Air Travel Solutions: SITA, Matthys Serfontein, says one of the challenges lies in expectations. “Passengers have a different idea of what constitutes good service compared with 20 years ago. They are demanding friendly and reliable serve, available on their mobile phones wherever they go. They want to be kept informed with tailored information that is easy to use, and be in control of the process.”
What will this future look like, asks Serfontein? It will include a seamless passenger experience; operational excellence; collaborating via technology; and easy travel every step of the way.
Fundi Sithebe, Chief Operating Officer of Airports Company South Africa, suggested that this could be achieved through creating an innovation hub, where players in the journey value chain can share collective thoughts, processes and systems. “This is a quick win: why don’t we start pulling in resources from different sources, in the name of collaboration?”
