Delta Air Lines was rated the top US carrier for the tenth year
in a row in BTN’s recent Airline Survey, amid a tide of improved travel buyer
satisfaction across all airlines even in the current challenging circumstances.
It was telling that Delta’s highest scores were achieved in
the Covid-19 response, Covid-19 communication, Customer service for travellers,
and Communication with buyers categories – evidence that transparent dialogue
and engagement is more important than ever.
Meanwhile, much of the feedback to the survey's open-ended questions centred around two key
areas: communication and flexibility, both of which are key to laying the
groundwork for a corporate travel rebound.
“Our Delta rep kept informing us about their plans and the situation of
Covid-19,” one buyer wrote. “As a frontline industry, we are still heavily
travelling, so it is a big help to have an account manager who cares about our
business and travellers.”
Another noted that Delta’s “communication and sales reps have been
phenomenal during the pandemic,” with “everything from emails to airport and
plane inspections”.
Delta VP of sales operations and development, Kristen Shovlin, said the
airline has “hit every channel” in its communication strategy to provide a
“constant flow of communication”.
That has included producing videos to show the new traveller experience amid
Covid-19 precautions, bringing in experts to answer questions, hosting town
halls and talking one-on-one with corporate clients, she said.
Delta has also hosted more than 500 fam trips for more than 2,500 customers,
so they can see the measures in place first hand, SVP of global sales Bob
Somers said.
American Airlines has also has been conducting airport tours with clients
and agencies, which helps “take the mystery out of the check-in experience”,
managing director of strategic account sales Hank Benedetti said.
The tours let buyers see procedures such as the cleaning of aircraft and
application of the SurfaceWise antiviral treatment, he said.
For Southwest Airlines, the pandemic was an impetus to create “an
industry-standard marketing automation tool,” which it previously did not have,
Southwest Business VP Dave Harvey said.
The resulting tool allows Southwest to message travel managers globally and
equips account managers to customise their own communication, he said.
“It’s allowed us to be more timely and more tailored with our messaging,”
Harvey said. “If we need to get something out about the Southwest promise or
schedule changes, we can go through a decision tree about the most effective
platform. Our communications muscle has been taken up a notch.”
In recent months, airlines have reported that all-out travel freezes have
ended for most of their US-based corporate clients, with a majority of them
having at least some small level of travel.
“Every day, all day, we’re on calls with customers,” Somers said. “It
started with corporate travel managers, and now it’s chief medical officers and
risk officers, and they’re sharing it with their traveling employees.
“Science and government will drive when people come back to work, but we’re
making sure people have the confidence to travel.”
Airlines are now expanding that communication strategy to include other
parts of the travel ecosystem.
American, for example, is partnering with companies including Hyatt,
Marriott and Avis to “showcase the entire journey”, chief customer officer
Alison Taylor said.
United has put together a “return-to-travel” toolkit for buyers with
multiple resources from them to pass on to travellers, VP of sales strategy and
effectiveness Glenn Hollister said.
“Air travel is not seen as the barrier to business travel at this point,”
Hollister said. “The barriers we’re hearing about now have more to do with
travel restrictions imposed by governments and the simple fact that, in
reaction to those, many offices are closed.”
Making changes for flexibility
Since business travel ground to a halt in March, flexibility has been the
second crucial requirement for buyers from airlines, both in travel booking and
in the contractual relationship.
In the early days of the crisis, airlines responded with change fee waivers,
as they would have during a natural disaster. As it became clearer that this
would be a more prolonged and global issue, unlike anything the industry has
faced before, some of those changes have crystallised into something more
permanent for the industry.
One of the biggest changes came this autumn when airlines announced that the
elimination of change fees would be permanent, at least for domestic US travel,
although policy changes have varied across each airline.
United, which was the first to announce the permanent elimination, also
eliminated fees for same-day standby, Hollister said.
American, meanwhile, has so far been the only carrier to enable refunds of
price differentials when new tickets are booked at a lower price.
The airline took an additional step to ensure travellers were not able to
rebook unused tickets for corporate travel for personal use, making sure they
had to go through authorised agencies so new tickets were used for business,
Benedetti said.
Airlines have been flexible in other areas as well, such as extending
loyalty programme points beyond expiration dates and extending status into next
year.
They have also been extending corporate contracts, waiving requirements on
current contracts and lowering thresholds for programmes targeting small and medium-sized
companies, which generally have been quicker to rebound to travel than larger
companies.
Looking forward
Some buyers will have new relationships to build in the new year as many
airline employees, including on the sales side, will have left amid swathes of workforce
reductions.
“[Covid] did drive much more disruption in relationships we had with the
customer than I’ve ever seen, which is not desirable from ours or the
customer’s point of view,” United’s Hollister said.
“We made sure we let customers going through the process know ahead of time
the outcome for them personally, so the person giving up a relationship can
talk to the person picking up the relationship and do a warm handoff.”
Industry analysts project true recovery in corporate air travel is unlikely
to happen until at least later next year, pending widespread distribution of
effective vaccines, but airlines are nevertheless feeling a little more positive.
Delta has seen about 90 per cent of its corporate customers in the US return
to travel already, with such industries as entertainment and manufacturing
leading the way, Somers said.
American’s Taylor adds: “Demand for next year is really starting to improve,
and that reassures corporate accounts to see some normality returning.”