Despite its current problems, Amon Cohen foresees a fascinating future for the crossroads of Europe and Asia
IT SEEMED TRIVIAL AT THE TIME, but a story in May that Turkish Airlines banned cabin crew from wearing red lipstick and nail varnish, then reversed its decision, looks rather more significant in retrospect. It’s all been kicking off in Turkey in recent weeks, with rioting in several cities over a range of grievances with the government.
Despite the present crisis, I predict that Turkey will appear in multinational travel managers’ plans much more regularly over the next few years. I really believe the corporate travel industry hasn’t grasped just how much the business world is globalising, and how much that will transform who travels where for work.
Perhaps we are waking up to the fast-maturing potential of the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries (Beijing now has the second-busiest airport in the world), but other nations are developing fast, too. Turkey is a case in point. Its government recently awarded a tender to build an airport in Istanbul aimed at handling 150 million passengers annually by 2023 – which would make it the busiest in the world. If that target seems wildly optimistic, then consider this: Istanbul’s main Ataturk airport handled 45 million passengers in 2012, up 21 per cent, shooting it ten places up the league table of the world’s largest airports, from 30th to 20th. Seat capacity for Istanbul is up more than 30 per cent again this year.
Turkey has a flourishing low-cost airline sector, while flag carrier Turkish Airlines grew its passenger numbers from 29 million in 2010 to 39 million in 2012. It is now the world’s eighth-busiest airline in terms of international flights. Not surprising, really: Turkey has a much longer pedigree as a meeting point for East and West than the three big hubs crammed into the Gulf – at least one of which, surely, must ultimately prove a castle made of sand. Turkish Airlines operates more flights between Europe and Asia than any airline other than Lufthansa – and a formal tie-up between those two carriers has been mooted in recent months.
Of course one has to distinguish between business travellers flying through Turkey and business travellers flying from and to Turkey, but that is also happening. And with travel costs piling up for Turkish companies, travel management is taking root, too. In the corporate card supplement published with the May/June issue of Buying Business Travel, Visa said its commercial card business grew 40-50 per cent there in 2012. Visa expects Turkey to challenge its top five European markets in the near future.
Turkish Airlines is also trying to develop travel management practices in its home nation. The airline is 49 per cent state-owned, and a senior executive told me the public stakeholding explains why the carrier’s strategic objectives extend beyond turning a profit to helping its people compete in the modern business world. As a result, the airline is educating its business customers about Western-style airline negotiations to train them in procurement practices and cost control.
Unfortunately, the Turkish state also has the potential to interfere in its flag carrier in other ways – and that’s where the lipstick comes in. A major ideological battle is raging in this fascinating country between secular modernisers and religious traditionalists, and the lipstick ban, and subsequent reversal, has been one skirmish within that. The same battle has been flaring much more visibly on Turkey’s streets and, ironically, that could deter business travellers, as well as end a recent boom in conference business. Turkey may act as a crossroads between east and west geographically, but it has also reached a crossroads in terms of its own future.
ANOTHER IDEOLOGICAL BATTLE at Turkish Airlines has been over a proposal to cease serving alcohol in business class on domestic flights. The airline has also made noises about banning booze on all flights to Russia – and here you cannot help but feel they may have a point. Police had to intervene with tanked-up Russian passengers on Turkish Airlines flights no fewer than 28 times in 2012. One incident saw a man start a fight with his wife before – and you can’t help thinking he regretted it in the morning – deciding to take on an entire football team.
Having said that, bad mid-air behaviour is no respecter of nationality, religion or gender. There was a story recently about an American Airlines flight from Los Angeles to New York diverting to Kansas City thanks to a woman who refused to stop singing Whitney Houston songs. One can only imagine how her fellow passengers suffered, although I came close to such aural torture myself once when a woman across the aisle from me flick-shuffled a deck of cards non-stop from London to Dallas.
TALKING OF NAUGHTY PASSENGERS, I was also tickled by a report that three women dressed as nuns were apprehended while trying to board a domestic flight in Colombia. A strip search revealed each of them had 2kg of cocaine strapped to their body. Apparently, officials became suspicious because their habits didn’t look right. Must have been their drug habits, I guess.
AND WHILE WE ARE THINKING NAUGHTY THOUGHTS, what about the Accor PR boss who was widely reported for writing 100 hotel reviews on Trip Advisor without declaring his day job? Funnily enough, the executive, now suspended by his employer, turned out to be a big fan of Accor properties while being less than complimentary about rivals.
Stories like this confirm my own scepticism of public hotel review sites, which also present a problem for travel managers if disgruntled guests lay into properties in the preferred hotel programme. That’s why I think internal company review sites, which are pretty easy to set up these days, are an excellent idea. At least you know the opinions will be genuine, and if a preferred property comes in for sustained criticism, the travel manager can respond by taking up the grievances with the hotel or switching to a competitor. Ultimately, it should strengthen compliance with your programme.