The highlight for many airports at this year’s Routes Americas forum in Nassau were the Route Exchange Briefings, a closed shop presentation for airports where airlines highlight their plans for the future and how they do their route development. This is the only place where you can get a true insight into an airline’s network decision making process, from the horses mouth as it were.
The Routes Exchange Briefings allow the airlines to communicate to the airport, tourism authority and governments a number of key messages. First it enables them to provide a general overview of their airline, their network and how route decisions are executed.
Secondly, the airline can inform the airports and stakeholders what they are looking for from the discussions with the airports such as are they simply a fact finding mission or do they want specific market information. The briefings provide the answers to the many questions airport delegates may ask. Do airlines want data, market insight or introductions to route 'enablers', hotels, tour operators and ground service providers? Do they want to negotiate on a support package? What type of support do they want? Do they want discounts on airport fees, marketing budgets or some kind of shared risk deal like a joint venture or revenue guarantees?
Finally, the airline also gets the opportunity to communicate what they can do for a market, how many passengers can they bring to a destination and what the economic impact of a air service can be to a destination.
We had five Airlines providing a Route Exchange Briefing at Routes Americas from very different market segments, but all with a interest in the Americas - European charter carrier (TUI), a European Full Service Carrier (British Airways), two US low-cost carriers (Alligiant Air and Alaska Airlines) and a Latin American Full-Service carrier (TAM Airlines).
There has been a tremendously positive feedback to the presentations. There was a lot of useful information included in all five briefings with some insightful material on the companies' future network strategy. Unfortunately, as these are closed-door sessions we are unable to provide details of this content but recommend attending all future Route Exchange briefings at Routes Regional and World events.
For more information on the Route Exchange online trading zone please click here.
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