Cathay banks on travel agents
Cathay Pacific is increasing its frequency to Hong Kong from Chennai and introducing flights from Hyderabad. The airline’s strategy will include targetting agents in offline cities.
DEVIKA JEET Cathay
Pacific Airways’ passenger loads have been healthy with an average of 80 per cent. Their performance has been stable in spite of the increasing market fluctuations. Confident about the Indian market, Rakesh Raicar, Regional Sales & Marketing Manager – South Asia, Cathay Pacific Airways, says, “India serves as one of the fastest growing economies and is one of the few countries, which is on the growth path despite the global economic downturn. There is a significant industrial and economic development in and around most of the metros due to which the travel from this region is still healthy. So all in all, we have a great deal of confidence in the long-term future of the Indian market and we look towards playing our full part in growing the aviation business here.”
This year, the airline has increased frequencies between Chennai and Hong Kong from four flights a week to daily, with effect from September 1, 2012. Sister airline – Dragonair – has revealed its new four-timeweekly service to Kolkata that will launch on November 2, 2012. It recently decided to start four-time-weekly services from Hyderabad to Hong Kong with effect December 2012.
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“India continues to be a market with high potential and the Cathay Pacific group intends to continue to expand in this market. With the current expansion, we expect to maintain 80 per cent load factor. We have utilised all our traffic rights and further expansion will now depend on being granted additional traffic rights,” says Raicar.
Focussing on their biggest distribution channel, he says, “Travel Agents are our biggest distribution channel in India. To promote our new destinations, change in timings and the increase in frequencies, we conduct regular sales blitz and workshops for travel agents, corporate presentations and agency contests.”
The Airline works very closely with travel agents as they form an integral part of the distribution. Regular sales workshops are conducted for the agents where the airline sales team provides regular updates on the products and services. “Our workshops have also targetted agents in offline cities such as Jalandhar, Chandigarh, Mangalore and Coimbatore, to name a few. We also conducted various sales blitzes to promote our new destinations, change in timings and increase in frequencies. The most recent Sales Blitz was done in Chennai, Bengaluru and Delhi earlier this year to promote our North America connections and in Mumbai to promote our connections to Australia,” explains Raicar.