Air New Zealand using tactical marketing to advantageAir New Zealand using tactical marketing to advantage

Air New Zealand marketing manager for the Pacific, Ms Jo Kennedy is one of the invited guests at the tourism industry forum hosted by Cook Islands Tourism Corporation. Kennedy discussed fares, forwards, recent activities, opportunities, capacity, game changing and the meaning of Matariki to the award winning airline.
The national airline are very proud of having won the Airline of the Year award but also the categories of CEO, CIO and CFO of the year, which pretty much covers the field.
The New Zealand to Rarotonga strategy across all islands is not just fill the planes but to have ‘yield were we can make money’.
One of these strategies is the smart saver air fare as a base and then take the yield up from there.Kennedy said the forward bookings to Rarotonga are at 26% capacity compared to Nadi which is 12% capacity and says that demonstrates that people are ‘a lot happier to book to come to Rarotonga’ which is a lot more stable and not likely to face a coup, she joked.
Air New Zealand have been working with Chris Ingram from Cook Islands Tourism Corporation in NZ and using their brand advantage and tactical pricings which seems to be working well.
Campaigns have included ‘Hot deals to the Cook Islands’ and ‘Take a break to the Cook Islands’ and while the March figures are still ‘soft’ the April figures and further are coming up and July, August and September look likely to be good months.
Another smart strategy is to reconfigure the planes by removing most, if not all business class seats (for short haul flights only) and replacing them with 14 more economy seats. Kennedy said the strategy came about after carrying out ‘lots of research’ and should work well (actually it was not clear if they had begun the strategy yet or whether they are about to launch the scheme).
The marketing manager said it was all about choice where the passengers can choose the way they want to fly: seat; seat and bag; the works and works deluxe.
The Matariki scheme is about New Beginnings and has been used for flights within NZ and now to be extended to the Tasman and Pacific Islands.
She said the Pacific is a large market attracting half a million passengers and having air fare cuts but increase in capacity for economy seats is all about increasing that choice.
The wholesalers are flying over to Aitutaki to get a first hand look at the island to see what effect cyclone Pat has had on tourism if any.

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