Interesting news: Gulf Air is rolling out upgrades for inflight media entertainment. However, doesn't this carrier have much larger issues to deal with than throwing in a few extra inflight amenities? From its peak Gulf Air has descended from being a shared flagship carrier with co-ownership by the governments of the Kingdom of Bahrain, State of Qatar, the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, and the Sultanate of Oman into a solely Bahraini carrier which struggles to be profitable with a mid-size coverage network of 48 destinations. In comparison Emirates covers a 97 destinations and has been profitable for many years, infact the carrier maintained profitability (albeit less profits) during the most recent recession.
With younger competitors in the region dwarfing Gulf Air (such as Etihad, Qatar, Airways and Emirates), Bahrain's national carrier may benefit from a more clear cut approach to bolstering marketshare by finding creative ways to deal with legacy issues by focusing on cutting costs and increasing revenues. The new CEO Samer Majali recently announced the carrier would focus on the medium haul marketplace, this is wise on multiple levels. The long haul routes are being cannibalized by Qatar Airways, Etihad, and Emirates. The medium haul region has strong fundamentals in terms of consistent growth in customer demand and increased aviation traffic. Etihad's move to compete with Indian LCC's by establishing all economy flights could be a good lesson for Gulf Air, showing that markets can be approached vertically and horizontally (meaning not just more routes, but more pricing segmentation of those routes to capture the traffic).
http://www.businesstraveller.com/news/gulf-air-rolls-out-media-players-across-fleet (Below the new media player)
No comments:
Post a Comment