Virgin trades on BA customers

We see Virgin Atlantic has managed to nearly double its pre-tax profits from £34.8 million last year to £68.4 million for the year from March 2008 to February 2009.

Virgin said the growth was down to a rise in premium travellers and “prudent management decisions”.

In a week that has also seen British Airways announce record losses of over £400m these results are even more staggering.

It doesn't need an aviation expert to spot a trend here, it's clear that BA are loosing their premium traffic, which provides a large proportion of it's profits as their customers are trading 'down' from First and Business class to Virgins Premium Economy.

We've always liked Virgin. We applaud their way of doing things, with an emphasis on customer service so we like to see them picking up business in this way.

In Richard Bransons book, 'Loosing my Virginity' he gives a speech to Airline executives which goes along the lines of:

"Its easy to become a millionaire in the airline buisiness" he says. "First of all you start off as a billionaire!"

Do what it says on the tin..

We see Thomson and First Choice have seemingly announced a new policy of allowing their overseas representatives to address and solve customer complaints during holidays. Is it just us, or is this stating the 'bleeding' obvious?

The TUI Travel companies said the rationale behind the move was ‘to recover service failures quickly and efficiently, reducing the need for customers to pursue issues with customer services on their return to the UK’.

Overseas representatives are already trained in accordance with company customer service guidelines, but are now also being encouraged to use their discretion and initiative to ensure that the merits of each case and ‘exceptions to the rule’ can be considered...

Inevitably things can and do go wrong with holiday plans, but a simple quick solution normally results in a converted customer, one who far from being a complainer becomes an advocate for the companies quick and efficient handling of any problem. Best fix things on the spot than allow resentment to grow and fester over two weeks and then result in a letter from the small claims court!

Ian Chapman, head of overseas for Thomson and First Choice, said: ‘Holidays are so important, never more so than in the current economic climate'. Meaning, we guess that clients are particularly keen to get their monies worth and less tolerant to things going wrong. All their overseas staff will undertake a three-day training programme to ‘motivate and inspire them in first class customer service'.

The fact is that you don't really need long sophisticated training programmes and dedicated phone lines to deliver exceptional customer service. You just need to do what it says on the tin! And then a little bit more.

How much more? Just a little bit. The runner who wins the 100m by 0.0001 of a second has just done that little bit more - so sometimes exceptional customer service is just answering the phone, or turning up when you say you will. Now that's good service!

All at sea with the French hoteliers..

We are pleased to see the Indian Cruise market starting to develop. Although spurred by price cuts, the Indian Cruise market is up 20 per cent in April.

Cruise tourism is still a niche segment in India and accounts for only two per cent of all outbound tourism. However, this year, travel companies are offering competitive packages to attract customers and the size of the Indian outbound cruise tourism industry is estimated to be worth about Rs 240 crore with around 80,000 people cruising per year, mostly taking shorter and faster cruises rather than those favoured by Americans and Europeans.

This reminds us of a tour we helped organise many years ago for an international coach tour operator, seeking to offer short, quick itineraries around Europe specifically for the Indian market.

The tours were a great success until we had a special tour request from a group of Jains. While their itinerary was straight forward, their dietary requirements threw our French and Swiss hoteliers into a spin!

" So that'll be 40 vegetarians for lunch, no meat, no chicken and no vegetables that grow under the ground..".

We can still hear the hoteliers response now..

Booming business for The Three Overcoats

ICELAND - It's good to see that the depreciation of the Icelandic Krona against most other currencies has meant an increase in international tourist arrivals.

Never the cheapest country in the world (we were taken aback on our first visit to this wonderful country a few years ago when we discovered that a taxi from Keflavic Airport to central Reykjvik would set us back more than USD200) the falling currency has meant that a visiting Iceland can be done without taking out a second mortgage.

One year ago, US$1 bought 75 ISK but today US$1 buys 125 ISK, much to the enjoyment of foreign visitors to the country.

In April 2009, more Swiss, German and American tourists visited Iceland than in in the same period in 2008, with an increase of over 6%, according the Iceland Tourist Board.

Political leaders and economists alike consider tourism to be a key industry to help Iceland on its way to economic recovery after the country’s bank collapse last October.

Footnote: Reykjvik is home to one of our favourite restaurants in the world - the fantastically named "The Three Overcoats". Wonderful.