Op-Ed: Airlines Need to Change Their Tune
byTom Brussow/
从积极的角度来看,业务正在蓬勃发展,旅游业在“出现在Covid”旅游行业的脆弱交响曲中非常和谐地团结在一起。不幸的是,唯一的例外是我们的航空公司朋友,他们继续拖延我们,因为他们经常演奏。需要明确的是,我不仅指他们的运营挑战,还指他们更大的经营方法,尤其是在影响旅行顾问及其客户时。
As travel advisors, tour operators, cruise lines, and others are collaborating to innovate, improvise and adapt in support of each other and our shared customers, the airlines stubbornly stick to their greatest hits, with seemingly no real interest in updating their material to meet the newest trends.
对于顾问来说,这是令人困惑的,因为我们为客户提供服务,以掩盖和清理他们继续创造的许多混乱。这样一来,我们也想知道,当他们似乎很少关心客户,并且充其量对其分销网络的关键组成部分漠不关心时,任何主要的业务部门都能期望成功。
So, if that’s the song the airlines are intent on playing, the rest of us are going to have to cover our ears to ease the pain and do our best to keep the audience coming back. Or, how about if the airlines would take this opportunity to join the chorus of the faithful and make some important and long overdue changes that will put them in a better position to be successful moving forward?
Here are my five areas of advice for focused change that would make a world of difference:
1. Take Accountability
What could be more novel and yet simple? The sole business proposition of the airlines is they are paid by consumers to safely provide transportation from point A to point B. That is it. When they fail to do that, regardless of the circumstances, they should step up and own it. Make it right 100% of the time. Don’t shirk, evade, lie, or obfuscate your clear responsibility to the customer to save a buck.
2.与您的航空公司合作并担任领导职务
Dear airline CEOs: Together you are stronger and better. Get together in a room and figure out how you can all do better. Remember the good old days of Rule 240? Protect the customer and get them to their destination instead of leaving them high and dry to fend for themselves or sending them home disappointed because that family vacation to Jamaica they’ve been dreaming about for months is now ruined.
同样,凭借如此大的市场能力和业务影响,航空公司的领导人还需要更加明显,平易近人和参与。在当今的旅行景观中,与供应商范围内的许多伟大领导人相比,从我的角度来看,它们本质上是无形的和无关紧要的。
3. Acknowledge and Appreciate the Role and Contribution of Travel Advisors
As advisors, along with driving a significant amount of their revenue, we take on the arduous workof dealing with the onerous airline business policies and cleaning up the many messes they create. For all of our efforts on these two fronts, the airlines unapologetically believe we are due exactly NOTHING for the countless hours we expend in caring for our mutual clients.
Imagine a universe where the airlines paid their fair share and the impact this would have on the well-being of the travel advisor community. One in which advisors were afforded fair compensation for their work, non-rev flight benefits, improved ease of doing business, and access to sales support/service staff. There is little doubt this would be a game-changing development for travel advisors.
4. Better Manage the Leisure Vacation Package Market
For years, the airlines made the vast majority of their money from “high yield” business travelers—corporate and government contracts and meeting and incentive customers who routinely paid the highest of their fares. As a result, leisure travel represented a small piece of the profit pie and was afforded little time, attention, or investment. A greater focus on the leisure travel market is warranted. Here is how to do that:
-Create processes/programs that will allow you to identify the travel advisors who are selling your product. I sell a significant amount of airline products. Yet, the respective airlines have absolutely no idea that I even exist, what or how much I am selling, or how to go about growing my sales/market share.
-Develop an advisor engagement, communication, and relationship-building game plan. Let the travel industry know that the airlines are on the side of the travel advisors and are committed to building their business and relationships with advisors in very specific and much-needed/overdue ways.
-Develop agent support vehicles for problem resolution, business development opportunities, training, marketing tools, etc. Every business sector in the travel industry, except for the airlines, has widely invested in these areas for many years. It is basically standard operating procedure.
-Assemble a group of top leisure agency owners to help you understand the landscape, challenges, and opportunities and build a plan. From there, the sky is the limit.
5. Be Easy and Enjoyable to Work With
The harsh reality is that working with any airline-related issue is truly painful, time-consuming, and hugely frustrating for travel advisors. Why does this have to be the case?
首先,航空公司的管理人员应该做数学和consider the ramifications of a scenario where travel advisors stopped selling and servicing their products. How many more reservation and customer service support employees would be needed to fill that giant gap? How many millions of dollars would that cost?
There are some quick, easy, and inexpensive opportunities here to examine business policies and processes and the ease in which advisors (and their clients) can do business with the airlines. There is a long list of examples where the policies just don't make any sense, create tons of unnecessary work and frustration, and are a disservice to the customer.
First, let’s start with a commitment to a business philosophy that says that the number one mission, absolutely no matter what, is to get the customer to their destination as quickly, and with the least amount of hassle, stress, and disappointment as possible.
How about a dedicated advisor sales and customer service support staff that are easy to reach and are empowered to assist in quickly resolving customer issues? This seems reasonable and represents the very minimum that could be done.
如果航空公司有意志力和即使解决这些机会之一的良好意识,那肯定是音乐的音乐,这是数千名旅行顾问和我们服务的数百万客户的耳朵。我保持乐观,并为迫切需要它们的行业做出更改,并提供任何进一步的贡献。
Because the rest of us up here up on the stage need the airlines to perform at their very best and hold up their end with every note. For, if they do not or will not, it means the entire orchestra that is the travel industry will suffer. The audience will continue to judge us and make their future purchases based on the weakest performers among us…the airlines.