BANGALORE: Taking ‘travel planning’ to another level, Indian air carriers are looking to rake in customer loyalty with promotional offers in the upcoming holiday season for travel in 2015.
Promotional offers starting at as low as Rs 499 would be just another way of consolidating market share and brand loyalty at a time when Indian skies is getting ready to induct at least 3-6 new airlines in the next few months. However, airline management is not willing to accept that the increasing number of promotional fares is not part of the ‘fare wars’ concept.
Kalanithi Maran-promoted SpiceJet has led the promotional offers campaign despite their mounting losses last fiscal and the first quarter of Fy15. Their ‘early bird’ Rs 499 offer for bookings made before September 15, 2014 and travel between January 16, 2015 to October 24, 2015. According to reports, the scheme has already sold one lakh tickets.
Even full service carrier Jet Airways was not far behind with their Rs 725 offer for bookings made before September 5, 2014 for travel from January 16, 2015.
Indian arm of Malaysia’s low cost carrier, AirAsia introduced two new routes including the northern Indian cities of Jaipur and Chandigarh from Bangalore at an inaugural price starting from Rs 3,490. With their ‘everyone can fly’ mantra, the airline has forced other airlines to follow suit in reduction of fares and also mulling over charging for check in luggage; something that existing carriers had not managed to do so far.