New Opportunities in Onboard Hospitality
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The first portion of the PEX Conference hospitality stream kicked off with a presentation from branding.aero‘s president and founder, Stathis Kefallonitis, PhD., who discussed sustainability as a form of onboard hospitality and marketing tool for airlines. According to Kefallonitis, “An increasing number of passengers are not just passive observers.” Ethics and sustainability are among the growing concerns for today’s travelers. JetBlue’s Blue Bud initiative, that supports budding local food companies, and Qantas’ campaign for its commitment to environmental sustainability were among the airlines highlighted for addressing passenger concerns about sustainability effectively.
Creating an Emotional Bond
Dr. Yener GiriÅŸken from Turkey’s first neuro-marketing research company, ThinkNeuro Neuromarketing, shared compelling insights from recent research conducted for Turkish Airlines that piqued the curiosity of more than one airline representative in the audience. Using EEG to track brain waves and eye tracking to monitor gaze points, passenger responses to the various elements of the in-flight experience are evaluated based on what ThinkNeuro established as the “emotional bond curve.” In his pilot example that monitored passengers on a Turkish Airlines flight from Turkey to Singapore, they found that passengers’ emotional bonds increased during meal service and when they saw the flight crew – especially when the crew was friendly and smiling. Training cabin crew effectively, GiriÅŸken says, is a big game-changer.
“In order to move a customer, you have to move them emotionally. Rational marketing doesn’t get you anywhere.” – Dr. Yener GiriÅŸken, ThinkNeuro
On another study where they monitored consumer responses to Turkish Airlines ads, GiriÅŸken explains that creating an emotional narrative, and connecting branding to the climax – where the emotional bond is strongest – is critical.
Both panelists picked up on themes touched on in the morning’s Blue Sky sessions, such as the difficulty of obtaining accurate and comprehensive feedback from passengers and consumers. “People don’t think what they feel, feel what they think and do what they say,” so asking them isn’t always the most reliable way to collect data, so it’s necessary to collect data in different ways and make connections, explains GiriÅŸken. “We say one thing, may mean another, but our senses never lie,” adds Kefallonitis.
Tech-Fuelled Travel
In her presentation, Mandy Saven, head of Food, Beverage, Hospitality at Stylus explored the potential technology has to make connections and enhance the travel experience. “Connectedness is incredibly important to today’s tech-savvy millennials,” but it’s also to business travelers, she explains. She provides several examples of airlines who have recognized the business traveler’s desire to connect, such as Virgin Atlantic’s in-flight social network, KLM’s Meet & Seat ant Delta’s Innovation Class. “This kind of initiative is really clever, because it makes use of people’s time while they’re traveling,” she notes.
Instead of trying to launch disruptive or ground-breaking social campaigns, Saven suggests that clever business will identify trends in social behavior, “create conversations with consumers on their own terms,” and find ways to leverage these interactions. “Over one-million selfies are taken everyday,” she remarks, and several companies, like 1888 Hotel in Sydney, dubbed the Instagram hotel for incorporating photo-sharing into all aspects of the hotel’s image and service, are finding ways to capitalize on these trends.
It’s a Wrap – Trends in Packaging and Food and Drink Service Onboard
Ariane Van Manicus, airline food and packaging consultant from Now | New | Next began her presentation by identifying six emerging trends in food: food for health; safe choice; 24/7 lifestyle; uber premium; traditional anchors; and choice and control.
According to Van Manicus, airlines are introducing healthier options onboard, and the health benefits offered by the products is reflected in the packaging. Likewise local products initiatives, such as KLM’s Local Farmers Feed the World, highlight the origins of their food sources on its packaging, delivering what Van Manicus refers to as a holistically-developed product. “The passenger appreciates this kind of thing,” she explains, echoing Kefallonitis’s presentation.
Seizing New Opportunities
In his Blue Sky Talk, semourpowell’s cofounder, Richard Seymour made a call for innovators to address the liminial spaces in the airline passenger’s travel experience, and that theme was picked up in the hospitality presentations.
Saven used Addison Lee & Graze’s snack box intiative, In-Car Grazing, as an example of a partnership that seizes a liminal opportunity. The service, which offers a thematized in-car snack boxes (think: pre-flight, breakfast, etc), is what Saven describes as “A neat way to embed a different service into your core service culture.” Van Manicus gives London Heathrow Airport Onboard Picnics initiative, that allows travelers to create an in-flight picnic out of offerings from airport restaurants, as another example of a way to seize this emerging opportunity.
All conferences images by Maxim Sergienko