30 SPECIAL FEATURE
30 SPECIAL FEATURE TRANSPORT Jens Bischof Chief Commercial Officer, Lufthansa German Airlines with the new cabin & seats at ITB Berlin World Premier: Premium Economy Class from Lufthansa For the first time in 35 years, the German airline introduces a new class of service A new Premium Economy class has been revealed by Lufthansa at ITB Berlin 2014. We asked Jens Bischof, Chief Commercial Officer, Lufthansa German Airlines to explain: We celebrated a world premiere at this year’s ITB Berlin. Lufthansa’s new Premium Economy Class was being presented to industry experts. The new travel class can be booked from May onwards and will be available from November 2014, initially on the Boeing 747-8. The new seats will gradually be fitted on the entire long-haul fleet within twelve months. Our Premium Economy Class will create a completely new travel experience that combines affordability with greater comfort. The seats offer up to 50% more room than Economy Class and will position us in a premium segment within the international competitive environment. Who will the key target customers be? The new product will enable Lufthansa to meet the requirements of many business and private passengers who travel with other airlines in a similar travel class or who fly Economy Class due to travel specifications. Following the introduction of its new full-flat Business Class, Lufthansa created a much wider gap between Economy and Business Class. As a result, there is now room for its new Premium Economy Class, which offers considerably more space and comfort as well as many additional product features, but is closer to Economy Class than Business Class in terms of its average prices. The move also means that Lufthansa is introducing a completely new travel class for the first time in 35 years. A number of other airlines already have Premium Economy. What will be your key differentiator? It’s all about German Engineering and a real new product – it’s a Premium Economy and not just an Economy Plus. Also we have not just taken a seat off the shelf. The new seats were designed in partnership with the company Müller/ Romca Industrial Design in Kiel and produced by the seat manufacturer ZIM Flugsitz near Lake Constance. Depending on the aircraft type, they are up to 3cm wider and provide greater privacy as well as approximately 10cm more room at the side thanks to each seat having its own wide armrest and a centre console between the seats. The back-rest can be reclined further and the seat pitch is a significantly more spacious 97cm. With a baggage allowance of two items weighing up to 23 kilogrammes each, passengers can take twice as much free luggage with them compared with Economy Class. An enhanced service awaits Premium Economy IT’S ALL ABOUT GERMAN ENGINEERING AND A REAL NEW PRODUCT – IT’S A PREMIUM ECONOMY AND NOT JUST AN ECONOMY PLUS passengers on board: they are greeted with a welcome drink and will find their own water bottle as well as a high-quality amenity kit with practical travel accessories at their seat. Meals are presented on menus commensurate with the new travel class and served on porcelain tableware. Did you survey customers and clients to assess what you would offer? The design and features of the new seat in particular are based on extensive passenger surveys and workshops with sales partners – a process that has been successfully used at Lufthansa. More than 200 passengers took part in a ‘seat lab’ to select the optimal seat type for Lufthansa and the other components of the product. For the first time, some 300 representatives of sales partners and companies worldwide were involved in interviews and workshops at a very early stage in order to evaluate market potential, product design and pricing structures. Upselling models and marketing ideas were devised and discussed jointly in an online panel with around 600 participants in Germany, China and the USA. ITB BERLIN NEWS • Tuesday 18 th March 2014 www.itb-berlin-news.com
TRANSPORT SPECIAL FEATURE 31 Making Tracks in New Territories Deutsche Bahn markets new services through the continent International tourism and cross-border transport have been increasingly important for DB Vertrieb GmbH who are responsible for sales of the Deutsche Bahn passenger transport and a variety of other carriers on public transport (PT). As the professional interface between transport companies, they handle approximately 860,000 ticket sales and reservations daily. In an exclusive ITB Berlin News interview, we asked Birgit Bohle, Managing Director of DB Vertrieb GmbH, “What is the impact of international tourism on DB’s activity? Do you know how many international travellers use rail?” Birgit Bohle Managing Director of DB Vertrieb GmbH OUTSIDE GERMANY, OUR FOCUS IS ON RAISING AWARENESS OF OUR BRAND AND PRODUCTS, AS WELL AS MARKETING DEUTSCHE BAHN OFFERS Today, Deutsche Bahn offers around 300 connections, day and night, to 80 European cities. Each day more than 40,000 passengers use our international daytime services. Our flagship ICE trains travel to six European countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands and Switzerland. On the subject of the ICE: we were delighted recently to put our new ICE 3 into service. This train offers passengers even more comfort. What specific marketing activities are you undertaking towards international inbound markets? Outside Germany, our focus is on raising awareness of our brand and products, as well as marketing Deutsche Bahn offers. Together with our partners in the tourism sector, we therefore market Germany as a travel destination and establish networks with marketing and sales partners in source markets. We are also steadily expanding our network of agencies. We currently have 224 overseas agencies in 47 countries – the latest additions are in Malaysia, the Philippines and Slovakia. We are also extending the reach of our DB products abroad with strong online marketing. The centrepiece of this is bahn.com, Deutsche Bahn’s international mobility portal, which recorded around 17 million visits in 2013. The page is currently available in ten different languages and is of course continually being expanded. Which new products will DB Vertrieb be highlighting at ITB Berlin this year? This year’s highlights include our new luggage service for cruises, Fly&Rail Codeshare as an intermodal service for international air passengers, DB Gruppenreisen – our new tour operator for group travel packages – as well as the offerings of our tour operator Ameropa and those of Fahrtziel Natur. This is a cooperation in which 21 regions in Germany, Austria and Switzerland commit themselves to sustainable tourism and environmentally friendly mobility. Online and mobile services: how far are they used today by customers and the trade? What are the future services that you could provide online in the near future? As an innovative and integrated mobility manager, The new ICE 3 online and mobile services are extremely important to us. These help us to intelligently link different offers and means of transport and offer our customers tailor-made mobility solutions. Our mobility portal, bahn.de, with around 1.2 million visitors every day, is of key importance here, as is our DB Navigator app for travel connections and ticket booking, which has been downloaded by 13 million users. Further service offerings include the train radar, which allows users to follow all the trains on our network in real time, or the delay alarm, which informs passengers by e-mail or push message if their train is running late. And we haven’t stopped there: we are currently working hard to set up Qixxit, our intermodal, neutral mobility platform. Qixxit not only compares individual means of transport, but also combines these into complete travel chains covering the whole of Germany. ITB BERLIN NEWS • Tuesday 18 th March 2014
