Fly Emirates And Cathay Pacific Airways Comparison - Essay Example

Fly Emirates And Cathay Pacific Airways Comparison The airline industry stands out as one of the most competitive industries lately. In order to do well in such industries, business organizations usually operate under different strategies. For instance, despite the fact that both fly emirates and Delta Air Linesoperate in this industry, there allot of differences in their operations. Fly emirates is one of the most famous airlines in the United Arab Emirates. In fact, Fly Emirates is the largest airline in the Middle East. Fly Emirates flies to more than 140 cities all over the world. Globally, Fly Emirates is rated to be among the 10 best airlines.Cathay Pacific Airways is a Chinese based airline with its base atHong Kong International Airport. The airline operates both passenger and cargo services to more than 160 destinations in about 42 countries in the world. The airlines’ rates as the third biggest airline in terms market capitalization. It is also one of the world’s biggest cargo airlines. The airline was also awarded as the Skytrax's airline of the year in 2014. Fly Emirates Fly Emirates is one of the few airlines who were least affected by airline and economic downturn. Much of this is attributed to their targeted segment of the market. The airline has three main categories of customers. These categories are transit passengers, tourists, and business expatriates. As a result of the emergence of Dubai as a business hub and a tourist destination has really worked in the favour of Fly Emirates. As a result of Dubai’s economic advancements there has been an increase in the demand for workforce. At the moment the workforce in Dubai consists of individuals from various parts of the world. Due to the diversity of population, Fly Emirates have had mutual agreements with almost all the national authorities allowing them to operate in an “open sky” kind of operation which implies that they welcome competition. Price One of the ways through which the Fly Emirates have improved their marketing penetration is by improving their inflight service. The most outstanding thing about Fly Emirates marketing strategy is their pricing. As compared to most airlines in Europe, the cost of services offered by Fly Emirates can be said to be relatively low they have also made sure that their ticketing procedures are convenient. Most of the airlines in Europe have costs that range between 25%-30% higher than what Fly Emirates charge for their services (Gross &SchröDer 2007, p. 218). Careful planning of target airports such as Sydney, Bangkok, Melbourne, and Singapore enables the airline to offer their customers a perfect experience without having to increase their prices. This means that the airline is able to be attractive to customers who have limited resources and those with prefer comfort. Place Dubai, being the operational hub for Fly Emirates makes it the best position to connect to Asia, Europe, and Australia. The company has been using the connection point factor in many of their promotional programs. The airline also has a wide range of established networks and destination, making them more attractive to transit passengers. Fly Emirates has also made sure that their services are easily accessible by investing in various channels of ticket distribution. Most of their tickets are sold through their official website. People can also get their tickets through agents and call centres. Apart from the ease caused by their availability of their tickets online and through agents, their customers can also book flights, choose seats, and check in online through their mobile devices. As a result of the ease of accessing their services, most customers have always preferred using Fly Emirates after their first experience with the airline. Promotion Fly Emirates have widely used special offers in promoting their services. On their website, there is a section referred to as “Special Offers” where they avail different promotional offers to their customers. A good example of such promotions is, “kids go free to Dubai”. This is an offer given to children under the age of 16 and includes complementary flight, meals, accommodation, and Dubai entry. This is an offer that was only available to their customers and any customer who paid for their services stood a chance of winning the offer. The company is also popular for having a well-organized customer services which enables them to attend to their customers in good time. Many customers have recommended the kind of services that they were given by the cabin crew and the ground staff. Product The services offered by Fly Emirates are categorized into: first class, business class, economy class, and skywards. The first class is costly, but with highly comfortable and personalized services. Their business class flights have laptop charging, phone, SMS, services and email from every seat on the aircraft. This enables business people to take care of every issue even while on flight. The economy class flights are meant to give more rooms and thus are always the most affordable of the flights by Fly Emirates.However, there is always a provision of beverages and meals in this class of flights. Despite being the most affordable of all the services offered by this airline, customers can still be able to access SMS, email, and phone services from the plane (Cento 2009, p. 310). The ability of the company to provide a variety of services has enabled them to remain attractive to various types of customers. Somebody just has to view the available services and know exactly which of the services suit their needs. A person also has to choose the kind of service that matches their financial status. Packaging From the first time that a customer interacts with any of the employees at Fly Emirates they always have the impression that they are dealing with an organization with high levels of professionalism.Many customers have recommended the kind of services that they were given by the cabin crew and the ground staff. For the cabin crew Fly Emirates has always made sure that they employ the most social and ethical people. Their cabin crew is known to be among the best globally. Their ground staffs are also easy to deal with. Every customer can always seek any kind of assistance at the airport. When they are choosing their crew members they always make sure that they look for the most qualified ones in terms of social skills, academic qualifications, experience, and physical appearance. Their planes are also known to be among the most prestigious one in terms of the services that they offer, given the rates that they charge for these services. Positioning The involvement of the company in sponsoring of sports activities and sports organization is one of the things that have given it allot of popularity. The airline is also known to be one of the least emitter making it a very popular brand with environmentalist. It is also notable that the company has been very opportunistic taking any chance that they have to make their services better and making sure that they still remain one of the most affordable airlines globally. The online presence of the company has also enabled them to be more popular given the fact that it is one of the airlines with the most number of destinations among the global players in the airline industry. They have also created the popularity of being among the most effectively managed airlines with very few cases of inconveniences to their customers. This helps them in keeping their customers loyal and also help in winning more customers. Customer satisfaction is a form of marketing by itself. People In terms of human resource, it can be said that Fly Emirates has been very keen on the people that they employ to carry out various duties. Despite the fact that the airline is based in Dubai, it is noticeable that the company has a few foreign employees in addition to the local ones. This kind involvement gives an organization a kind of diversity that they can only get if they involve people with diverse backgrounds. The airline also has the policy of always seeking the best from the market and maintaining them so that they are always satisfied. The level of employee satisfaction in the organization is brought about by human resource practices that make sure that their employees are fairly compensated and frequently motivated. This has been able to create a good and happy atmosphere at the airlines. With happy employees it is definite that an organization will have happy customers. Cathay Pacific Airways Price Cathay Pacific Airways is believed to be among the most expensive airlines in Asia. This might be because of the fact that they always focus on the quality of their services. In Asia, many of the other players have made their costs lower in the bid to win more customers. Such changes have not had any effect on the rates at Cathay Pacific Airways (Holloway 2008, p. 178). Instead ,they have made sure that they give customers value for their money. Products The services that are offered by Cathay Pacific Airways are categorized into: first class, business class, premium economy, economy class. First class customers have the privilege of having lie-flat seats that are configured into suits. The first class also has meals services, with every customer being given a noise cancelling headset, 17 inch video screen with audio-visual capabilities (Doole& Lowe 2008, p. 277). These customers can also have access to the check-in lounge. The business class also has complementary meals, a video screen that is 15.4 inches large, and noise cancelling headsets. The business class also has lie-flat seats and iPod and USB ports. The premium economy has seats with pitches that are 6 inches more than the economic class. These seats are also wider. The seats also have 10.6 inch personal televisions and multipoint connectors for personal devices. The economic class planes have fixed back shell seats with each set having a 9 inch screen. Passengers using these flights usually get either complementary meals or snacks depending on the length of the flight. People Cathay Pacific Airways has made sure that they always employ the most qualified personnel. Their main focus has always been in the technical areas. This is because the company has the goal of making sure that their services are as free as possible from technical errors related issue. The same cannot be said about their public relations side. The company has a mechanism of employing the cabin crew, which has in the recent past proved to be ineffective. Over the past few years there have been many complaints regarding the kind of treatment that their on flight crew usually gives their customers (Fojt 2006, p. 213). This is a factor that has led to loss of customer given the fact that the airline industry is a highly competitive one. Promotion Cathay Pacific Airways has done a number of things that are aimed at making sure that they are able to attract more customers. Cathay Pacific Airways is well known for using advertisements for attracting customers. The airline has been observed to be very keen on taking advantage of the global connection brought about by the internet in advertising their services. For instance, the airline has uploaded advertisement videos on YouTube aimed at showing their potential customers the kind of experience that the airline offers. The airline has also been observed to be very active on LinkedIn (Cheverton 2004, p. 209). Apart from the advertisements, the airline has several promotional and loyalty programs. For instance, they have the “fanfair” program that avails ticket at exceptionally low prices, thus enabling the airline to fill some seats that would have gone unsold as a result of a decrease in demand. Place Cathay Pacific Airways has also made it easier for their flight tickets to be accessed by their customers. Despite the fact that the airline has online ticket sales, it is evident that the airline highly depends on Hong Kong travel agency businesses that they consider to be highly efficient. This can be proved by the number of tickets that are always sold through these agencies (Holloway 2008, p. 199). The airline is not worried about the fact that their internet sales are very low because they are convinced that the exclusion of the Hong Kong travel agency businesses from the sales process will mean that they will have to go for a certain period of very low sales before their customers get accustomed to buying tickets online. Positioning Cathay Pacific has always been referred to as “Heart of Asia” because of their target of being the best airline in Asia (Morrell 2013, p. 175). Despite the fact that the airline has always faced intense competition from Asian airlines that offer cheaper services, Cathay Pacific has always focused on differentiating themselves through the quality of services that they offer instead of joining the prices battles. They have been able to establish themselves as the airline with the best quality of services while still being able to raise revenue. The introduction of “fanfair” and the premium economic class has also enabled the airline to give their clients varieties without having to compromise the quality of services that they offer. All these practices are due to the fact that the airline wants the quality of services that they offer their customers to be their identity. Packaging Cathay Pacific has always made sure that their customers are given the best impression. Their choice of personnel is also meant to make sure that every customer is treated with the highest level of personnel. However, the choice of agents in the distribution of their tickets means that they have no power over the kind of treatment that their customers are subjected to during the process of acquiring flight tickets (Kumar &Steenkamp 2013, p. 202). There have also been some complaints about their flight attendants something that has affected the way people view their services. However, the overall nature of their services entailing inclusive of meals and screens in every seat makes their services highly inviting. Comparison One notable difference between the two is the nature of their services.The strengths of both companies are the kind of services.Both companies have made sure that their services are of high quality, thus being able to attract customers with needs for high quality services (Belobaba,Odoni& Barnhart 2009). 178). However, Cathay Pacific is more concerned about the quality of services and even has a wide variety with the introduction of the premium economic class.Cathay Pacific has more focus on quality than the prices. The prices of the services offered by the two airlines are also very different. Fly Emirates is able to compete globally because of their prices enable them to compete with airlines all over the world. This is something that has given Fly Emirates a competitive advantage over Cathay Pacific. Their pricing strategy targets the global market while Cathay Pacific focuses on the Asian market. Despite the fact that many of the competitors of Cathay Pacific in Asia have reviewed their prices, Cathay Pacific has focused more on their prices (Lowe 2005, p. 217).This might be a disadvantage to them because of the economic crisis that force most customers to seek for cheaper alternatives. The distribution system for both airlines can be observed to be very different. Cathay Pacific focuses on using agents while Fly Emirates uses online ticket sales. Despite the fact that Cathay Pacific is content with the kind of sales that they make through an agent, this kind of involvement has limited their global sales (Uwagwuna 2011, p. 167). There have also been increases in the number of customers who wish to busy their tickets online. Buying tickets online makes the tickets more affordable because customers do not have to pay the extra commission for the agent fees. Online buying of tickets has also proved to be more convenient for global customers as compared to the use of agents. Both business organizations have very effective promotional activities that have been effective in increasing their popularity. One thing that someone cannot fail to notice is the fact that both airlines have widely taken advantage of the internet in promoting their services.They have both been able to increase their market share as a result of their promotional activities. Another notable difference about the two airlines is their images. Fly Emirates have given an image of global entity with many of their marketing strategies targeting. In their strategies they have targeted more than the Dubai market. This means that they are able to remain competitive globally. Cathay Pacific has been observed to be over reliant on their success in the Asian market. Despite the fact that they are considered to be the biggest airline in Asia they are not among the most known airlines globally. Their inability to review their prices means that they are not able to effectively compete globally. However, the good thing is that they have been able to maintain the high quality standards of their services. Not being able to review their prices has forced Cathay Pacific to adopt some operational strategies such as the introduction of “fanfair” that was aimed at making sure that they are able to sell all their tickets instead of flying with empty seats. This is a situation that was created by the fact that their charges are high and unfavourable to people with minimal financial abilities. Both airlines have been able to make their services presentation inviting. In the case of Fly Emirates much attention has been paid to the personnel, with social skills and physical appearance to make sure that they give the impression of professionalism. Most of the employees that they have are highly qualified and skilled in handling customers making it easier for them to have more customers coming back to the same. Cathay Pacific on the other hand has not invested much on personnel, but in the equipment. Their flights of all classes have certain provisions that Fly Emirates do not have. For instance, all their classes of flights have television screens for the purpose of entertainment. However, it should be noted that the sizes of these screens depend on the class of flight. Their seats are also more comfortable with extra services including complimentary meals, something that is not common with Fly Emirates flights. Bibliography Belobaba, P, Odoni, A & Barnhart, C 2009,The Global Airline Industry,John Wiley & Sons, Chichester. http://www.123library.org/book_details/?id=23614. Cento, A 2009,The airline industry challenges in the 21st century,Physica-Verl, Heidelberg. 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