Gulf Air Attempts to Boost Local Traffic

Middle East national carrier Gulf Air has unveiled a host of new commercial initiatives that it hopes will position it as a dynamic and innovative operator with a difference. Key to this revised strategy is winning a greater share of its home market where it has seen its presence decline due to greater competition from rivals across the region.

Speaking at a press conference in Bahrain this week the airline’s Chief Commercial Officer, Karim Makhlouf said the national carrier is all set to expand its customer base and increase its revenue by introducing a range of new products, services and incentive packages for key customer segments while strengthening its home market share.

“Since the launch of the airline’s new business strategy in November 2009 by Chief Executive Officer Samer Majali, we have made some notable progress; we added 15 new destinations to our network, discontinued four unviable routes, brought in 14 new aircraft, improved our on-time performance by seven per cent and achieved a fleet technical dispatch reliability of 98.9 per cent. Now the time has come for us to focus on our customers’ needs and increase our commercial efficiency,” he said.

“We realised that our market share at home – the Kingdom of Bahrain- is just 32 per cent - the lowest compared to our regional competitors. At the same time, competition has increased with more and more new airlines including low-cost carriers entering the market eating into our customer base and thus, our market share,” he added.

According to Karim Makhlouf, “it is imperative” that Gulf Air owns its home market and a series of new customer-focused initiatives will target different customer segments – family, business, government, pensioners and the youth – to win back market share. “As the national carrier of the Kingdom, we have a moral responsibility to promote Bahrain and make ’Bahrain Fly’,” he added.

In the latest change to its schedule, Gulf Air will add a sixth weekly flight to the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa from August 4 and moving to a daily service from October 30. The airline competes with Ethiopian Airlines which already offers a daily schedule. An estimated 23,000 O&D passengers travelled on the route in the past year with Gulf Air accounting for just seven per cent of this total, having only introduced its flights in December 2010.