British Airways` South African passengers are increasingly going online to make reservations, with over eight times more passengers who flew in December having booked online compared to a year earlier.
According to British Airways, more than three times the number of African passengers booked online between April and December last year over the same period the year before, with South African passengers accounting for the bulk of these.
SA compares favourably with similar sized markets such as Canada and Australia. Between April and December last year South Africans made 91% more British Airways reservations online than their Australian counterparts and 23% more than Canadian passengers.
Online revenue from SA accounts for about 1% of the airline`s total e-business earnings, which equates to the revenue contributions of markets such as Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland.
John Westermeyer, British Airways` SA e-business manager, attributes the strong growth in online business to a cumulative approach that involved getting passengers acquainted with accessing the airline online, active promotion and innovative offers.
"Generally, people seem to need some encouragement to make the first click. Once they have they tend to become converts and e-evangelists, telling their friends and colleagues about the ease of booking online."
He says rather than over-hyping its online services, the e-business team took a considered approach to overcome concerns such as security and ease of booking.
"We started slowly by enabling our Executive Club frequent flyers to check their mileage online and redeem tickets by e-mail. This was followed by a promotion that rewarded Executive Club members with miles for online bookings. Last but not least, we launched e-savers, an online one-stop shop for cut-price fares at short notice."
E-savers is available to everyone, from travel agents and frequent travellers to first-time flyers. Originally it offered only domestic fares, but has now been extended to include international flights.
Despite a steady increase that saw online bookings more than double between April and September, Westermeyer emphasises that the airline is not focusing on online travel to the exclusion of other distribution channels.
"Customers should be able to access us the way they want to, whether this be via a travel agent, by telephone or by walking into a British Airways office. The reality, however, is that people increasingly expect the convenience of being able to plan, price and book their trips online and any airline that fails to recognise this will simply be left behind."
The British Airways Web site can be found at www.ba.co.za.
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