Thai Airways, agents brainstorm on building networks

Thai Airways International has teamed up with travel agencies and the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) to map out its strategic plan to keep the national carrier among the world's leading airlines.
Yesterday, the firm kicked off the THAI Commercial Team Conference under the theme "Toward Professional Excellence in Building Networks". More than 200 people in the travel industry and THAI's executives working in its offices worldwide were invited to share opinions at the two-day conference, which would be collected to define a practical marketing strategy and fine-tune route management to make the company more profitable.

"Where the money is, we will go," said Sorajak Kasemsuvan, THAI's new president.

One of his first priorities is to decentralise management to offices worldwide. Headquarters in Bangkok will no longer be giving orders. From now on, the head office will have to work together with international branches to create strong synergy.

Money-spinning routes from Bangkok to London, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Sydney and Bombay are the pilot project. Offices on both ends will have to work together by creating a strategy to boost revenues and cabin factors, aimed at serving the demand of passengers of the two sides. The home office will play a key role in providing marketing tools to support them to reach their goal.

Then, the two sides will be evaluated under the same key performance indicators, he said.

In 2013, it's clear that THAI intends to achieve 12-per-cent growth in sales to Bt224 billion amid the uncertain economic outlook, especially in the US and Europe. However, the company believes its main airline still has more room for growth.

Asean will be a major source of revenue, while China, Russia and India are on the radar, along with TAT's policy to promote tourism campaigns in those markets.

"Asia offers more opportunity. It depends on which markets we capture.

This will help offset the markets we are missing now,'' Sorajak said.

Thai Smile will play a key role in achieving this goal. Not only serving Asean, the sub-brand of THAI will also look for secondary cities in China within flying times of three to four hours to increase its passenger traffic.

Next year, the aviation outlook is still positive. However, the real risk is fuel-price fluctuation. It has not gone beyond US$135-$140 a barrel.

Sourced: nationmultimedia