The Passenger Experience in Asia is All About the Details
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APEX Insight: Results from the IATA Global Passenger Survey reveals Asian passengers have an affinity for aircraft cabin details. “It takes a lot more to make an Asian passenger happy,” said Tim Schaaf, director, Marketing and Sales at the IATA World Passenger Symposium in Hamburg this week. IATA confirmed that airlines, which meet high expectations in IFE quality and cabin features, will satisfy Asian customers.
During a session on cabin trends at the IATA World Passenger Symposium in Hamburg, Tim Schaaf, director, Marketing and Sales for IATA, shared insights gleaned from a passenger survey which revealed the importance Asian passengers place on cabin details, especially on technology and in-flight entertainment (IFE).
Schaaf emphasized that one should not paint regions with broad strokes, or make sweeping cultural generalizations, but presented concrete feedback from over 60,000 passengers, 30 major airlines and 39 global hubs, which allowed IATA to find patterns in regional passenger preferences. The survey revealed Asian passengers place great importance on the small details of their journey and have particularly strong opinions when evaluating the quality of onboard entertainment technology.
“It takes a lot more to make an Asian passenger happy,” Schaaf said. “All the little things need to work properly. They’ll look at the picture quality and ask how many pixels there are on the screen, make remarks if it’s not HD – that’s important to them. The ease of operation of the IFE, the selection of papers and magazines available, even the audio selection. In Asia, all of these selections are very important.”
Regional data collected in the survey was more specific to frequent business travelers, while global data referred to leisure travelers. Addressing their preferences is key to attracting high-revenue passengers, who could become loyal customers.
“It takes a lot more to make an Asian passenger happy.” – Tim Schaaf, IATA
“The check-in experience is important, as are cabin features, the appearance of the cabin, the post-flight experience. It all has to work,” Schaaf said. “But in Asia, a lot more individual attributes are important. There are much higher expectations across the board from Asian passengers.”
By comparison, North American business passengers are more vexed by language barriers than in other regions, Schaaf said. To them, the inability to communicate well with crew in English results in a high level of dissatisfaction. European passengers are the easiest to please, the IATA study found.
Asian passengers share the same high standards for crew grooming, composure and training as the rest of the world. “Crew is important for everybody,” Schaaf said.
Overall, IATA survey respondents, across leisure and business travelers, said crew significantly influenced their satisfaction with their flight experience.