Flight catering FOCUS ON
Keep it simple Increasingly complex catering strategies mean onboard offerings have never been more volatile says Peter Jones
wenty years ago when I first began researching the onboard industry for the Flight Catering textbook, the offering to the consumer was fairly straightforward. Put simply, LCCs offered retail sales onboard and legacy carriers offered complimentary F&B. There was some variation, but this was largely to reflect the departure time or the market served. Today the situation could not be more different. Even four years ago when, as director of the Travel Catering Research Centre (TCRC) at the University of Surrey, we conducted research that identified no less than 17 different ‘catering strategies’, and since then the situation has become even more complex. There are implications for this increased diversity and complexity worth looking at further. Many airlines do now give away F&B items, but expect passengers to pay for others. In some cases, food is included in the ticket price, but beverages are not. Or, perhaps soft drinks and/or cold snacks are complimentary but alcoholic beverages and/or hot snacks are not. This combination of a complimentary and retail offering presents a challenge. Forecasting complimentary demand is relatively straightforward, as it will have a close relationship with the number of passengers. But forecasting retail demand means understanding consumer behaviour and estimating how many will wish to buy items – a much more challenging proposition. This situation becomes even more complex for flight caterers and passengers when an airline does not have a single catering strategy, but a range of different ones. In most cases, an airline with this approach will apply it to flights of different duration, typically offering complimentary F&B on longer routes and expect customers to purchase items on shorter ones. The TCRC identified some airlines with up to four different offers, each dependent on
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whether the flight was less than one or two hours, or up to durations of over six hours. Once an airline decides to adopt a ‘mixed strategy’, this can be applied to flights on different routes and also to different seat classes on the same plane. It has always been the case that the offer varies by seat class, but now it is possible for Economy passengers to
“Increased diversity creates a climate of perpetual change”
be asked to pay, whilst high fare passengers have complimentary service.
An unintended consequence of this increased diversity is that it potentially creates a climate of perpetual change. Once a variety of offers are adopted, it becomes very tempting to keep ‘tweaking’ these in search of (probably mythical) improved performance or ‘best practice’. There is a risk that as demand for air travel takes a dive or a new competitor joins the route, the carrier’s instinct is to seek retail sales on slightly longer flights or add in a complimentary meal service as
a way to fight back. So diversity breeds volatility, and vice versa.
So what, does this matter? Well, a guiding principle for successful operations management is to reduce complexity. ‘Keep it simple stupid’ is a tenet that most operations managers live by. This is especially the case in today’s modern just-in-time operations environment of sustainability and continuous improvement. The prevailing attitude to catering suggests airlines are bucking this trend. They have been able to do that because flight catering operators have introduced IT and ERP systems that enable them to cope reasonably well with the increased complexity and volatility. That’s just as well, because in the future airlines will not be thinking in terms of different strategies for different routes or seat classes, but of a catering offer for each individual passenger. The era of mass customisation is already with us, and is going to become ubiquitous. Watch this space for more on this trend in our next issue. Prof Peter Jones is executive publisher for
www.hospitalitepublishing.com E:
profpjones@qmail.com
www.onboardhospitality.com 73
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