South African Airways (SAA) is set to upgrade it’s fleet to A340-300 aircraft, which will add 21 seats to each of the flights from September 2014. SAA has currently reduced it’s flight frequency from seven to six flights a week, and will increase it back to seven in April 2015. “We have seen an increase in passenger traffic with the efforts of everyone pushing the destination, including South African Tourism (SAT) and Indaba creating an opportunity for Asians to see what products we have to offer. It brought in a bit of increase in traffic,” said Sajid Khan, Country Manager – India, SAA.
Unfortunately, the destination has been losing momentum in tourism numbers over the last few months. Initially, Khan revealed, there were visa issues at the consulate which took time to resolve. In the mean time the market took a beating and the airline lost about 18-20 per cent of it’s market share.
“When the Ministry finally sorted it out, we saw an increase in numbers. The total outbound footfall from India to South Africa rose by 10-15 per cent. And now we are hit by Ebola and are beginning to see cancellations. The outbreak has spread to four countries and even India has begun to question travellers from Africa to track the places they visited in the last two weeks to trace and test them. It’s a good thing to do but it is also scaring a lot of passengers. They don’t want to be traced and checked and would rather go somewhere else,” he stated.
Speaking about their plans going forward, Khan revealed that he is keen on starting operations from Delhi, but the market is not strong enough. “I want to start operations from not just Delhi, but 10 other points in India. But the market is not large enough. South Africa welcomed about 120,000 Indians last year, and our current capacity is about 89,000. The numbers don’t add up. But when they do, Delhi will be our first stop. It’s the next big market for us,” he added.
In addition, the airline has upped it’s ante on social media in a bid to draw more passengers on to the airline. According to Khan, a lot of decision making as far as travel is concerned is done on social media, and SAA wants to stay ahead of the game through visuals and contests. “We want to be present and show passengers that we are not some old airline, like any other modern fleet. Very few people know it’s a good airline and it makes their choosing SAA very difficult,” he said.
Most recently SAA launched it’s Social Checkin feature, a global campaign through which passengers can sign in through facebook, allow the app to take in details, and highlight other passengers signed on to social checkin who share the same interests, giving the traveller the option to sit beside them. In addition, they are running a testimonials campaign, where they interview passengers checked into the flight to get their feedback and post it on facebook.
India, Khan revealed, is one of the highest load factors on the international network of SAA. However, South Africa is geographically located the southern tip of Africa, making the destination the airline’s only market as it loses the position of a transit destination. Furthermore, SAA does not get much of the market to Africa as the neighbouring five countries require transit visas, and that becomes a weak point. “If the transit visas for the neighbouring countries are taken away, opening up those markets, or the connections to Kenya are improved by SAA, traffic to South Africa will increase,” he opined.
The airline’s current marketing strategy is to promote the destination rather than the airline, following the idea that once travellers choose to visit the destination they will go to the travel agent to learn how to get there. SAA works closely with the travel trade in India, owing to the fact that ticket bookings on the airline’s website were not available until very recently.
Furthermore, their existing codeshare with Air India, and the latter’s recent joining of the Star Alliance, would strengthen SAA’s connectivity and provide benefits such as through checkin. “We also want to see if we can do codeshares with more destinations with Jet Airways and Air India, subject to government regulations of course. If South Africa and India share the agreement to increase tourism exchange, talks for which are on right now, it will help increase these codeshares,” he added.
