Page 27 - AAA MAY-JUNE 2012 Online Magazine

FEATURE INFLIGHT RETAIL

High level sales

Traditionally, Asian carriers have lagged other markets
when it comes to in-flight sales. But as one of the
world’s fastest-growing travel markets, with some 620
million ppa, airlines need to look at new and innovative
revenue opportunities. By Tony Sit

Here’s an old statistic about movie in 2015 for airline, rail and bus travel,
theatres and theme parks: less than 50% festivals, cinemas and sports events. the
of sales happen at the door. the rest is communicative and interactive power of
concessions sold to a captive audience. the app-driven mobile media is today at
now imagine (as a retailer) a store with the fingertips of millions of tech-savvy
locked doors, with shoppers kept inside asian travellers.
for a fixed amount of time, with no according to the asian travel monitor,
distractions, often with plenty of idle time, (part of research firm iPK international),
and eager to spend. sound attractive? a recent survey reveals 32% of asian
that’s the description of a typical flight travellers plan to travel more in 2012
leaving from an airport near you, every than they did in 2011 and 37% plan to
few minutes, with bulging wallets. travel the same amount. only 19% of
across asia there’s a change in the respondents said they planned to travel
way people live, think, spend and earn less – at a time when the majority of
money – and look at their travel. in Western economies are still struggling.
increasing numbers, and boosted by low- From china to australia, asian travellers
cost carriers (lccs), asians are boarding with healthy wallets are looking to enjoy
aircraft every day, going to destinations an in-flight experience, using a whole
they would not have dreamed of a mere range of connected touchpoints and
few years back. along with this movement mobile technologies pre-flight, at the
towards more travel, the region is seeing gate, in and post-flight, and en-route to
a parallel explosion in smartphone the final destination. airlines can now
adoption – 90% in singapore, 61% in take advantage of more opportunities
Hong Kong, very high in Korea and Japan than ever to sell and upsell on relevant
– and way higher than europe and the and wanted products and services over a
us (around 43-40%). by 2011, over 85% vastly increased window of opportunity.
of new handsets will be able to access
the mobile Web, according to .dotmobi Potential for business
research. Japan leads the world with 47 although traditional duty free and in-
million m-payment tap-and-go phones, flight retail is not what it used to be, a new
and china is predicted to boast 169 generation of travellers in the increasingly
million m-payment users by 2013. most digital and mobile-connected skies mean
tellingly, dotmobi says that one in eight retail opportunities for airlines are
mobile subscribers will use m-ticketing practically limitless.
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