CAPA TV

In Europe the enormous publicity attracted by a sixteen year old Swedish girl has rattled the airline industry and is prompting government talk of aviation taxes to reduce flying.

• Will our region go through the same turmoil? 
• Will there be a similar, Europop revolution? 
• How will governments respond? 
• When will airlines make carbon offsets mandatory?

The answers to these questions will be critical to aviation and to how corporates function in the near and medium term future.

Session Provocateur: CAPA – Centre for Aviation, Chairman Emeritus, Peter Harbison

Moderator: CAPA – Centre for Aviation, Chairman Emeritus, Peter Harbison

• ACCOR, Director of Sales Performance – Business Partners, Pacific, Elizabeth Georgopoulos
• City of Sydney, Sustainability Engagement Coordinator, Kate Read
• FCM Travel Solutions, Director Global Sales & Strategic University Partnerships, Jamison Warren
• AI & Bot Strategist, Customer Experience Futurist & Entrepreneur, Catriona Wallace

Is your hotel program delivering the right results?

Is your Sourcing strategy keeping pace with changes in the global accommodation market?

Are you actually getting the rates you negotiated?

Join us to find out how the power combination of data and technology can help drive sustainable value to your organisation year after year.

HRS Australia, Managing Director, Ana Pedersen

Terminator or Westworld – where will AI take us? Probably both and somewhere in between according to Dr Catriona Wallace, AI expert and founder of listed Artificial Intelligence company Flamingo AI.

Catriona advises the world’s leading companies on AI strategy, the Future of Work, AI Ethics and Human Rights and how to prepare for the incredible transformation that AI will bring.

Based between the US and Australia, with a PhD in Organizational Behaviour – Technology Substituting for Human Leaders, Catriona is one of the world’s most cited commentators on Artificial Intelligence, Customer Experience and Entrepreneurship.

Catriona has been recognised as one of the most influential women in business and entrepreneurship and Advance Global has awarded Catriona with their top Technology Innovation Award for Australians working abroad.

In honour of her work in the technology field, Catriona was recently inducted into the Royal Institution, recognising her as a pre-eminent scientist (2019).

Catriona is also a philanthropist, human rights activist and mother of five.

Please welcome Dr Catriona Wallace.

Consider yourself an NDC Expert? The NDC topic has been one that has dominated discussions all around the world. Key parts of the corporate travel industry are now ready to look forward and delve further into the real impact of this important capability.

• What will NDC look like in five years?
• Is this complex commercial and technological distribution landscape sustainable?
• How are business models evolving in response?

Session Provocateur: ATPI, Commercial Head for Global Corporate Business, Julian Mills

Moderator: ATPI, Commercial Head for Global Corporate Business, Julian Mills

• CTM, Global Head of Partnerships, Scott Ward
• Qantas, Global Manager – Distribution Strategy & Channel Development, Anthony Collins
• Serko, Chief Strategy Officer, Bob Shaw
• University of Sydney, Travel and Expense Manager, Penny Meakes

In Europe the enormous publicity attracted by a sixteen year old Swedish girl has rattled the airline industry and is prompting government talk of aviation taxes to reduce flying.

• Will our region go through the same turmoil? 
• Will there be a similar, Europop revolution? 
• How will governments respond? 
• When will airlines make carbon offsets mandatory?

The answers to these questions will be critical to aviation and to how corporates function in the near and medium term future.

Session Provocateur: CAPA – Centre for Aviation, Chairman Emeritus, Peter Harbison

The CTC-CAPA Corporate Travel Gathering – Australia took place in November 2019 with the purpose of providing corporate travel buyers with strategic and operational skills to create a traveller centric programme. Managed Travel is rapidly evolving and successful travel programmes and providers will need to adapt to change, rather than seeking to simply manage/control it, or seek to avoid it.

The conference began with big picture keynotes on the key influencers impacting the industry including aviation, demographics and economics. Through a combination of keynotes, rapid fire presentations, interviews, panels, debates and masterclasses corporate travel buyers were guided to become successful leaders of their travel programme.

This is a must attend for those seeking to learn from, network and collaborate with today’s travel industry leaders! Our fantastic line up of speakers will ensure you leave each event armed with the latest knowledge, solutions and data to help you create value for your travel programmes.

For decades airlines carelessly discarded information about their customers, leaving this powerful tool in the hands of intermediaries and the GDSs. As airlines sought to wrest back market power and to reshape their focus from flying towards distribution and other revenue forms, this coincided with vastly increased computing power and an ability to assimilate vast amounts of data into something meaningful. 

This is transforming the way airlines think and work, from operational analytics to leveraging data to generate better commercial returns. But it is still early days and the potential of this art has many forms still to display. And of course it’s not just airlines who are playing in this park. Few organisations have more consumer data than Facebook, Amazon, Google – and the numbers of potential players is growing by the day.

Inevitably some airlines are more advanced than others, so the gap between big and small tends to grow.

• Exploring categories of activity where analytics is being used effectively
• Converting data to save costs and generate revenue. What streams are possible?
• Who has the capability to use data effectively? – is outsourcing necessary?
• Will the big consumer data aggregators play in the airlines’ park?

Legacy distribution systems have for decades presented airlines with the twin problems of high costs and product commoditisation. In efforts to address these issues, a handful of carriers throughout the world have invested heavily into establishing their own API channels with agents, while the concurrent push by IATA for airlines to implement the NDC standard has encouraged the industry to adopt a retail focused approach to distribution. 

The GDS will also need to evolve in order to remain relevant and to compete effectively against other intermediaries and aggregators such as metasearch companies (some of which now have direct booking capabilities), as well as digital behemoths such as Amazon, Google, and Facebook – to gain a slice of the pie.

But as airlines work on enhancing their retail offering and improving their merchandising capability via both direct and indirect channels, a resounding message from industry players is that airlines need to consider the importance of mobile and messaging platforms, which are slowly replacing the desktop as the preferred interface for researching and booking travel.

• Is this increasingly fragmented and complex commercial and technological distribution landscape sustainable? How will business models evolve in response? Is there a need for a direct connect aggregator?
• Should airlines build lots of direct connects or revert back to lean, centralised distribution channels?
• Who is going to be offering services to bridge the gap between airlines/aggregators that are NDC compliant and those that aren’t? Will it be the GDS and IT providers, other airlines or speciality providers?
• How are newer intermediaries adding value to airline distribution?
• How do airlines enhance their digital shopfront? Are airlines over-emphasising the importance of airline.com over mobile messaging platforms and bot technologies?

This is awarded to the regional airline that has been the biggest standout strategically, has established itself as a leader and demonstrated innovation in the regional aviation sector. (Note that this award is not limited to operators of regional aircraft; it is intended to recognise smaller airlines – fewer than 10 million annual passengers – that either do not operate any long haul services, or only operate limited long haul services.)

Vistara was selected for its strong consistent growth, even before the collapse of Jet Airways in Apr-2019. Launched in 2015 and 51% owned by Indian industrial giant Tata Sons and 49% owned by Singapore Airlines, Vistara‘s traffic grew by 30% in 2018 to more than five million passengers and its seat count is up by 40% in 2019. In a highly competitive domestic market dominated by LCCs, this was a substantial achievement.

Vistara currently operates 40 domestic routes, serving 30 cities in India. It has recently added international routes with the launch of Mumbai–Dubai, Delhi–Bangkok and both Mumbai and Delhi to Singapore in Aug-2019 and Mumbai–Colombo on 25-Nov-2019.

CAPA Chairman Emeritus Peter Harbison said: “Vistara‘s growth from start up in 2015 to become India‘s sixth largest airline by seats in 2019 demonstrates that there is still a place for a well executed full service business model in a market where LCCs have more than three quarters of domestic seats and approaching one third of international seats. Vistara’s recent move into international operations promises to add a new dimension to the India market.”

Vistara Chief Executive Officer Leslie Thng said: “Our vision is to establish Vistara as a global full service airline that India will be proud of. This recognition by CAPA reaffirms our confidence in realising this vision as we broaden our horizons and prepare to launch medium and long-haul international operations while bolstering our presence in India. Our effort continues to be to innovate and stay relevant in the dynamic aviation industry, to maintain the highest standards of operations and to focus on delivering consistent, world-class service to customers.”

This award recognises the airline, airport or supplier responsible for the most powerful innovation in the industry over the past year. The innovation could be customer-facing, B2B, efficiency-related or a new marketing product – and must be a new standout and established the company as a market leader in the product or process.

Singapore Airlines (SIA) was selected for its ULR product. Singapore Airlines has invested heavily in ensuring the success of its resumed nonstop flights to the US. SIA worked very closely with Airbus to ensure its A350-900ULRs would be available and fit for purpose to offer travellers the best possible service available. SIA was the first airline in the world to operate the A350-900ULR, configured in a two-class layout, with 67 Business Class seats and 94 Premium Economy Class seats.

The innovative strategy involved an entirely new service and product including new meals from Canyon Ranch specially created for ultra-long haul nonstop US flights. Wellness formed an important part of the strategy with SIA partnering with Canyon Ranch, the world’s premiere integrative wellness brand, designed to re-invent ultra-long-haul travel with a focus on wellness cuisines, rest and relaxation, and general well-being on the world’s longest flights. 

“Wellness continues to be an important factor of any corporate travel programme”, said CAPA Chairman Emeritus Peter Harbison. “Singapore Airlines pushed the development of the A350-900ULR with a vision of expanding its premium long haul offering. This clearly will assist airlines around the world as they themselves push their long haul strategies. Combatting the impacts of these gruelling services by partnering with a leading wellness brand only emphasises the innovative strategy of the airline.”

Singapore Airlines Chief Executive Officer Goh Choon Phong said: “We are honoured to receive the Innovation of the Year award from CAPA. Innovation is at the heart of everything that we do at Singapore Airlines, whether it is our cutting-edge in-flight products and services, or the digital transformation programme that is changing almost every aspect of our business. Our record-breaking non-stop services to the US exemplify our efforts to push the limits and bring even greater convenience and comfort to our customers.”

Subsequent to the Asia Pacific awards, the CAPA Global Awards for Excellence will be announced as part of the CAPA World Aviation Outlook Summit in Malta on 5-Dec-2019. For more information on the CAPA Awards for Excellence, visit centreforaviation.com/about/capa-awards