Airlines, airports, tourism boards and how to bring them together | Expert Talk with Gavin Eccles
Welcome everyone, my name is Laura and this is Aeroclass Expert Talks. If we were to play a word association game and I said airports, I'm sure someone would follow with tourism. And of course that is absolutely right, because tourism and air travel are interlinked. Tourism is not only relevant to those hungry for adventure or eager to see some historical sites, it is a very important piece in airport and airline business strategies. Because tourism is a driving factor for and a stimulator of change in air transport. But if you’re doubting my words, I’ve got some back up today. I have a professor of aviation, Aeroclass instructor, and a consultant for aviation and tourism Gavin Eccles. Gavin, I’m very glad to have you join me
for this talk. Thank you Laura, excited as well, look forward to giving my opinions and insights. So following the pattern of our previous Expert Talks, we will explore Gavin's experience in aviation and teaching, talk about his course at Aeroclass, and look into air system development in a bit more detail. So I’m gonna start Gavin with the same question that I ask all my guests - just because I think it's the most important one as well - how did your career in aviation start? It's a long time ago, but let me try and go back. I was doing my doctoral thesis actually in hotels, so I started in the hotel sector, I was looking at branding and I was trying to understand the role of a brand in the hotel sector. And I within that I was contacted by the consultants that were doing work for the hotel group it had to be it was the biggest hotel group in the UK at the time and these were guys that had been inspirational in British Airways in the 80s in turning around the company and then they created a consultancy that focused on services management and hence they were working for the hotel group. And
had a long story short they said why didn't you come and work for us and they put me straight into BA and I went into British Airways as an internal consultant to basically run all of their sales and marketing development programs. So yeah that that's how I got in right in early and riding at what was then the world's favorite airline. Maybe things have moved on in 30 odd years, but yeah that's how I got in through actually through hotels and then hotels anything there used to be a good link between hotels and airlines that kind of slipped recently. And as you said in your introduction when you mention airports you normally also think of airlines, and it used to be airlines and hotels, now it's more airlines and tourism. Hotels kind of have not been so well connected with the aviation world, but
that's for another day. So that was it basically yeah so and then from that I did that for some years and then consultancy and then working for airlines full-time, so yeah that was about 30 years. What do you remember from your days at British Airways, because as you said it was some time ago now and I’m sure a lot of things changed. So were airlines operating a bit differently then, were they looking into different things? For sure I mean in those days you really didn't have the Middle East presence. I remember going to Dubai and Sheik Zayed Road had two hotels, three hotels and Emirates didn't really exist so the likes of BA, Air France these were the flag carriers.
And in those days BA yes it was it was a leader, they developed a project which was to put people lying flat in business class and that was something that nobody had ever done before, and so yeah there was inspiration coming out of the company. And of course the Middle East carriers then arrived and kind of changed the game a little bit, but yeah in those days that they really were flying around the world, offices all over and it was great to be part of that and we teamed up with London business school and we put on this program of creating what we call searching for the edge which was about giving sales and marketing people in the airline vision. And then working with Tesco’s which was a supermarket group that was strong in loyalty management and started to understand that the customer experience that you see in supermarkets and how they look after their customers and what airlines can benefit from this. And in those days relationship marketing was
really just starting and supermarkets had kind of led the way in in loyalty programs and airlines were some way behind that. So yeah there was it was good days, really good days and of course the airline like a lot had major changes and maybe it was too big, like a lot of companies became not easy to change, and good luck to them they're still a very strong brand when you look at the aviation sector. Absolutely, but now you started your career in BA and then you moved on to other assignments so I’m guessing you never really looked back and regretted your decision to join aviation as an industry. No for sure and you know the last 18 months not being able to travel it for somebody that was traveling so much it's a strange feeling to be home. A lot of people say that when you've worked for an airline it's hard to go and do anything else and because you're so used to that travel buzz.
I remember you know one of the one of the first things I learned in the airline was that - the people are working in aviation tourism, anything in hospitality, just the importance of the kind of the work that you do and the way that you bring people together. And I remember if you say if you worked for one of these wonderful marketing companies, like Procter&Gamble or Unilever, yes they make wonderful products that help our lives, but there's nothing you go to an airport on a Friday afternoon and see people's reactions and then you say if that can't make it motivate you to work for an airline. Remember we used to show pictures of people hugging and crying in an airport on the courses and send that to people and say that that's the industry that you work for, go and work for a company that makes toothpaste and see the difference in relation to. But saying that how those wonderful marketing companies have created differentiation. And some people say the aviation world became too commoditized, we should have learned more from the likes of how P&G and Unilever have really taken brand expectations, what the aviation industry kind of lost itself a little bit and everybody was focusing on lowest price right. So now we kind of move to this like a bit more challenging direction, so I do want
to ask you you've moved as you said you've traveled a lot, you moved to other countries for your assignments, but do you remember what is the most challenging or something that just kind of stuck in your mind from your assignment or a project that you found really interesting? I suppose I kind of two, on the most challenging probably was that joining the airline, joining BA, and particularly training sales and marketing. We ran a course in in some unbelievable kind of look like some sort of British stately home in US, which it's strange to see that when you think of skyscrapers etc., but we had all of the US BA sales and marketing team and you've got to go and teach Americans about marketing, that hey invented. That and that was I was young, mid-twenties, going over to a completely different world, and during my thesis I’d studied all of these great American business gurus and then you have to go and teach Americans that they created the story. So I suppose the most interesting probably was being and linking them to the to what you've said about my role in air services to actually get a flight from China to Portugal. It took a year and it may be 15 visits to Beijing to convince Group Hainan that it would make sense to start flying to Lisbon.
This was when China back in 2016, 2015 when china really was everybody was chasing the Chinese and to go there and represent the country and try and bring a flight, every European country was really trying to find Chinese airline companies to fly. They have a very strict rule as well which was if you have a flight already by one of the big three Chinese companies, then you are allowed to travel and so yeah we were we were kind of pushing for Hainan, started with Air China, then we ended up with Hainan group, but that was yeah that when that plane arrived that was kind of a little bit of that took a lot, lost in translation as you can imagine when you're working in a market like that, but also it was a booming time to be in China and just see how things and what they were doing in aviation and of course it's they're the ones that are probably coming out of this crisis the last in relation to opening their borders and that's something that a lot of European cities have lost that Chinese tourist in the last couple of years. Talking about other challenges especially in your professional career, you took upon teaching as well so I want to know what do you remember from your very first teaching experience. Was it something that you expected to enjoy or did it just kind of happen and then you continued? What's the story there? I was at the university of Bournemouth so I was doing my the PhD so in those days we were called a research assistant, so we had to we had to give classes. So I remember yeah we're talking now 22 year old going into a classroom to basically teach what would have been 18 year olds, because they're that's we in the UK your degree is from 18 to 21 and then you start doing your masters and doctorate straight away as well. So yes I mean preparation needed, but I suppose and also just the joy of telling others something that we know and the interaction. And I think what I learned quickly was that
the best way to teach is to facilitate - it isn't about telling it's about listening and sharing. And that's been pretty much what I’ve done since. I always say I’m a facilitator not a teacher, it's a nicer way of thinking it's a way that we need to listen and share with each other.
And of course the further you go up the academic career, the more you can facilitate, people say the wonders of doing MBAs etc. is because the power of the participants is in some cases more knowledgeable than the professor. And it's about sharing that ideas across with each other, but I think yeah what I learned quickly was don't just believe that it all, be ready to listen and discuss and hopefully share ideas for the best of everybody. You learn as much from them as they learn from you. Absolutely yeah and you began your teaching experience in lecture halls, not online. And you're now teaching at a university in Portugal so I just wanted to know because now you've moved to e-learning here with Aeroclass, so how is it different from teaching someone on campus - is it more like do you feel more pressure when you see students in front of you or when you just kind of stand in front of a camera? I think obviously picking up what I just said, that the benefit of having the students in the room is that there's dialogue straight away, so even yes you can you would hope that people ask questions, if they don't you can try to raise discussion points that brings the group in. So yes the way that we teach in in the real let's call it the real world for the moment is it's dialogue and engagement. Obviously in the pandemic we had to change and of course
universities had to go online and for a lot of professors that was not easy, because they're not familiar with the way that you need to also present the work. You can't just put slide, after slide, after slide - it will destroy the mind and people need to think differently about how they work in an online. And I don't think everybody's been able to make that transition as quickly as they would have liked to, but I think what it's done it's shown that there's an alternative way to learn. And I think a lot of universities, training companies, people taking days out of diaries was complicated. Now obviously during the pandemic it was a little bit easier to get to people because we knew they were at home, but I think what e-learning is proving is that it allows people to study in a different way, rather than forcing people to attend, be it morning, or afternoons, or evenings, and obviously a lot of my work was more at the at masters level, so it was normally evenings and weekends, which puts stress on people coming from work at 6:30 to then take four hour classes and finishing at 10:30 at night . That's not good for the system, people are not fresh, so I think yes no universities in some cases also have to change their way of thinking and this campus mentality is the wrong way, you have to go out to the market, not expect the market comes to your classroom. So I think yes what
you're doing over in Aeroclass makes complete sense, because it allows people to have access to learning at their own pace, at their own time, and that's where universities have not been so keen to move. We have classrooms, we have teachers, this is a timetable, so fit around us or you can't come. And that has to change so I think yes what you're doing it's perfect to allow people access to information and learning in a completely different way. It's not better or worse, both have their pros and cons, it's a different opportunity and we should use that and pick that up and help people to learn in a different thinking. Well Gavin you were a student once as well and do you imagine yourself now being a student and learning stuff on your kind of computer screen? Do you think you would have enjoyed that as well? I think it's a blend and I think one of the one of the great things is how to use both. I suppose in
in all cases we become so familiar with how we find content through the Internet so that that is a way. I think what we what we I think what people would say is that doing courses in isolation of meeting do you lose some of that that sharing of ideas and sharing of best practice. So the blended approach I think is the best way forward, so I know that's something that you are studying a lot, to understand how to take tutored content online, at the same time also try and provide platforms that bring the participants somewhat together to share ideas, and I think yeah that that's got to be the way forward this kind of blended approach. It's it shouldn't just be classroom or it shouldn't just be a computer, the way that we can put both together is the way forward and I think it allows people to reach out for new content and share content in a much easier way and support that in and make it more practical as well. And I think that that's where Aeroclass where you've been able to find that niche is go very much more practical driven and move it away from the board, the kind of the classroom style where it's providing more theoretical in underpinning no let's go for the more practical applied approach, which is what industries needs.
Well let's now talk about your course at Aeroclass. I’m sure our viewers want to know more about that, what it involves, what to expect, and who would benefit from it the most. Yeah what I where what we came up with was basically a course which brings airlines, airports, and tourism boards to the same classroom, let's call it classroom.
And we're calling it Air Services and Tourism Development. Air Services is something that airlines and airports have been doing for many years and what we're really saying here is how does an airport connect with an airline or how does an airline engage and ensure that it can land in an airport, that that that's the kind of mentality, but what we're trying to do is move that to another level and basically say the future of tourism is through connectivity and the way to get airlines engaged with your destination is to upskill the people who work in tourism boards to understand how airlines think. If I know how an airline thinks about creating a route, I then a tourism board can actually start liaising better with my airport on how we can work together to talk to that airline. So in previous times it was very much airline and airport negotiated and let's see if tourism has some money to try to support some sort of marketing campaign. What we're trying to do with this Aeroclass program is basically through a series of modules - we have around five different modules that can be done together or done over different periods of people's time - it's basically to understand what is air services, pre-pandemic and what will happen after the pandemic and try and give people understandings of how do tourism and airports really start engaging. And then we go into more specifics:
how airlines think, put yourself in the shoes of an airline, why would I fly to your destination, what risk do I have and how can you help reduce that risk. And I suppose this is where I’m a little bit lucky, because I’ve been on the both sides of the table. I’ve worked for an airline so I’ve negotiated discussions with airports and I’m also adviser to tourism boards, so I’ve I know what we are allowed to incentivize through funds etc. So I suppose I bring to the class
the bits that one hasn't had of the other and I’ll share those ideas with people. And then we look at how you put together incentive programs and then we kind of conclude with so how much is a route worth. So if we are able to get better connectivity to our destination, what can we expect then in terms of the multiplier effects and linking connectivity and tourism together. So that's a little bit about what we offer. Who can be there, who should this be pitched at - well it's mainly to talk to tourism board teams, so those people who are working in the liaison with source market development, so those people who are looking at strategic vision for the tourism board, where we're going, which markets do we want to attract, those that are already liaising with the airport team. Then the airports themselves, what we call the airport marketing
teams, the people who are working closely with the airlines, now they need to understand how to work and engage with the airport teams. Civil aviation authorities so the people who are kind of the those who are responsible for managing aviation in the countries, for them to understand how airlines and airports and tourism are working together. Chambers of commerce, we've seen certainly around Europe chambers of commerce are actively engaging with incentives to talk to airlines, because they're interested in connectivity to their to their destination. Economic agencies, DMOs destination management companies etc. those are the audience that would be beneficial to this air services and tourism development program.
Thanks Gavin I think it's a great introduction and for everyone who's interested they can watch Gavin’s course at aeroclass.org, but if you're not hooked yet I’ve got some questions that might get you more interested, because I had an opportunity to watch this course and I kind of came up with a few questions that I want to ask Gavin and just kind of explore it a bit more. In your course Gavin you talk about air service development and the three players that play that game: airports, airlines and tourism boards. But which one is mostly overlooked or let's say under-appreciated? I suppose it would be if we look back it would be tourism boards, because tourism boards were normally the role of a tourism board is to create destination awareness, create the brand, create the image, and build the ecosystem that when a tourist arrives this is what they can do. So of course they're not experts in aviation, they're not experts in airports and I think so from that saying that what that then meant is that a lot of negotiations about routes were not in the deep were not with tourism, they were with airlines and airports. I think what we would try and now say is that as tourism is rebuilding post-pandemic what's important is to understand what is which source markets was a destination interested in 2019 and which source markets now could be opportunities in 2022.
Because the world changed, the airline system is changing, the kind of models of aviation is changing, so I think if tourism boards are now re-thinking their vision of 2022 to 2025, in terms of we hadn't gone for this market, let's look at this particular source market, then they need to understand the air link that could come from that market, who are the players, what what's going on in that source market with aviation. So I think this is this is what the course will start to do it will bring tourism people to understand a little bit about aviation and then allow tourism and the airports to be more engaged together, to be able to go and talk to airlines. So in the past it was airlines and airports, now what we try and understand it's airports and tourism going back to talk to airlines. Some people would say an airline doesn't fly because of an airport, the airport is just a means of arrival. Now the question is what they're looking for is tourism was one side of that story, commercial benefits in terms of what's happening with business, and obviously friends and relatives and if there's that little bit of travel as well. So tourism is one let's call one-third the other of potential segmentation, the other two thirds it's VFR - visiting friends and relatives and business travel, so business travel tourism and VFR which makes up the airline's seat dimensions. So a third of that tourism boards were not so involved and they should be
much more involved and that's why we really pitched this course to try to upskill those people to then have that right conversation. Not to say they need to do the job at the airport, no the airport still makes all the connections with the airlines, but brings dialogue closer to each other, so I would say yes answering the question tourism had been a little bit left behind and now it's the opportunity for tourism to take the lead. To talk about this - you mentioned that the world has changed and of course that's all due to the pandemic, but there must have been some unexpected changes let's say in domestic travel as well, let's say in the United States the international borders were closed and the domestic flights kind of took over and were there any changes that were surprising? I guess some of the airports that usually are not that busy became very busy because people started traveling within their country? I would say also across Europe as well with what with what Ryanair, easyJet and Wizz. We came up with a new there's a new buzzword it's called root experimentation and this was this was not how airlines were very logical, very disciplined in planning. We have what we call the IATA winter,
which is seven months and the IATA that's sorry the IATA summer, which is seven months and the IATA winter, which is five months. So November - March, April into October. And airlines would be planning so now we're here in November so we we're in IATA winter. Normally we'll be planning now next winter, in some cases airlines have not yet finished completely this winter, because planes could be available. Summer 22 is still not yet programmed by all airlines, so this is this is
unprecedented, but this is also in some cases in the past we were very logical so we we've planned winter 22 now so sorry it's done, everything's in the schedule, airlines are selling tickets, slots have been negotiated etc. and it's been very disciplined, but maybe that's not how the consumer trends were changing. And this idea of people's habits being more spontaneous. So what the pandemic did and what you're right talk mainly about the US, because they opened aviation faster than anybody else, because of the domestic push. Routes were being planned within 15 days, rather than one year, so all of a sudden it as long as we can get the pilots and the crew up and running and there's a slot at the airport we can move things around very quickly. So I think what this has shown is that why post pandemic would we go back to planning one year ahead. Surely we should be more experimental during the periods of the season, so yes now we're here in November, if a trend picks up for February we should be ready for that, don't put your assets just and commit to them because it's what we've always done. And I think what this has
shown coming back to your earlier question - who airports, airlines, tourism - who's now probably got control is airlines, they are more flexible than they've ever been, so if they're ready to change it means airports, tourism needs to be looking at information three to four months in advance. And there are providers of that data which will give you forward bookings very quickly and if you're seeing demand coming in let's say in February talk to the airlines and then say look we know we're seeing forward bookings. Switch some capacity from one destination to another, rather than what we would we would never have done that, no we've everything's planned. I think what this has shown is that airlines can be very spontaneous, tourism can be spontaneous as well. Do the airports have the infrastructure
ready to do quick change and that's something that we need to think about, because it's don't plan for next year, plan for the next few months and with the way social is changing, the way people book travel as well, that also allows airlines to then work with quick schedules and try and build up a new way of looking at route development. Do you think this change is going to stay around or is it something that only applies to this kind of pandemic situation? It's hard to say because you hope that people don't go back to what they knew in the past. 2019, yes capacity-wise and growth-wise things were very well, but commercially a lot of airlines were not as profitable as maybe some of their shareholders would have liked. So we were not one thing is growth, one thing is capacity, but demand also is important and yield management and the importance of what we can get per seat. So I think flexibility has to be around,
I think what airlines are learning is that we why be so strict in planning, if the trends are if the trends continue as they are let's work with this and be adaptive and create more experiments. And for that you need tourism boards understanding the role of an airline and airports, being ready with incentives together with tourism to not have such long processes that we've done in the past to get things up and running. We need to be more flexible. So what are the other challenges that the air system development as a as a thing is facing now post Covid. Because when you mentioned the supply is coming back, but the demand is still not at the hundred percent so what are the challenges and how should like these three players overcome them? Well I think obviously from destinations it's an opportunity. In one way if one if one destination is not doing so well and another one is, you can switch people's habits and we saw that. Certainly in 2021 there was a lot of switching of one destination to another so I suppose at some point it is a little bit of a fight, whilst we still don't know what is happening now we should we're here in November we're starting to see some maybe some concerns in central Europe.
If airlines were planning a lot of travel to the Christmas markets what will happen with the ski destinations, if they're not going to open, would they put flights now to southern Europe that we're going to winter holiday destinations. So we're not through this yet, so I think the first challenge is being ready to liaise from a tourism point of view, being ready to put your business case forward quickly to airlines that if something if somebody else can't get what they expected, are we ready. And that of course it's somebody's losses somebody's gain it's not always a nice way to think about it, but I think that it's inevitable that there are some markets that will be more open this winter and maybe spring than maybe others. So there's a little bit of opportunistic business there, if we work that way. At some point everybody should get back to some reality, what that then means is that how do we look at where we've come from and there are opportunities now to look at new source market.
Aviation is changing in certain destinations and airlines are some airlines have got bigger, some airlines have got smaller. So again it depending on what where were you facing your market space, were you working with which carriers, how are they looking so you need to kind of do your due diligence, where were we, where will we be are, is the airline situation well in those markets, and how can we benefit from that. So I think at this stage it's we still can't say we've got through this pandemic I think we probably were more optimistic in October and we probably now might have a little bit of less optimistic in November, unfortunately, just because of where we are in certain and also the way people are talking about maybe some further lockdowns etc. It's the wrong terminology, lockdowns it means not traveling so
it's a little bit of a worry it may be short, but again it we were just getting some optimism back and we need to keep that positivity as much as we can. Obviously in realities in what we're facing. Well I mean I guess time will tell us how what happens, but while we wait I invite everyone to watch Gavin’s course and learn more about this and maybe it will prove worth your time and then you can use your knowledge to further expand your tourism in your country, your city, or wherever you work. Anyway Gavin thanks for joining me I really appreciate your time and you sharing your knowledge with us and your thoughts. Laura was a pleasure, thank you very much, and yes I look forward to having the opportunity to talk further and present the Aeroclass project to the market. Sure thing thanks everyone for watching and I'll see you next time! Bye bye.
2022-02-14 10:28
