oneworld airline alliance launches biggest yet push to increase market share in France and Germany

2006 年 10 月 11 日

The oneworld® airline alliance today marks the launch of its largest yet drive to win a bigger share of the air travel market from France and Germany.

The offensive is being supported by a multi-million Euro marketing communications campaign and featuring the alliance's first external advertising for five years.

The overall aim is to increase awareness of oneworld and its members and the services and benefits they offer air travelers from France and Germany - with that translating into more customers and more revenues for its airlines.

oneworld currently comprises eight of the biggest and best names in the industry, all international airline benchmarks for quality and value - American Airlines, British Airways, Qantas, Cathay Pacific Airways, Iberia, Finnair, LAN and Aer Lingus, plus their dozen affiliates.

Between them, they serve more than 600 destinations in some 135 countries, carrying more than 250 million passengers a year worldwide on more than 8,000 daily departures.

Early next year, in the alliance's biggest expansion programme in its history, they will be joined by Japan Airlines and five of its affliates, plus Malév and Royal Jordanian, increasing the alliance's network by almost another hundred destinations and adding another thousand daily departures to its schedule.

The existing eight oneworld members already account for around 12 per cent of the French international air travel market and 10 per cent of the German market.

Germany is one of only two countries worldwide served by all eight of the exiting oneworld airlines - and all three of the new joiners. They serve nine German airports - Berlin (both Schonefeld and Tegel), Frankfurt, Dusseldorf, Hanover, Hamburg, Munich, Stuttgart and, from April 2007, Nuremberg - with a total of some 1,400 flights a week with direct flights to 18 destinations in Europe, the Americas and Asia and the smoothest of connections from there across the rest of their worldwide network.

Six of the existing eight oneworld airlines serve France (with LAN and Qantas the exceptions), along with all three of the new joiners. They fly to 12 French cities - Paris, Toulouse, Lyon, Nice, Marseille, Mulhouse, Montpellier, Bordeaux, Ajaccio, Bastia, Nantes, Strasbourg - with more than 1,600 flights a week with direct flights to 26 destinations in Europe, the Americas and Asia and the smoothest of connections from there across the rest of their worldwide network.

In both France and Germany, as in every other country around the world, oneworld offers a wide choice of great value and flexible alliance fare and sales products - for captains of industry touring one continent or student backpackers traveling all around the world.

As one of a handful of what oneworld has designated its "key target markets" globally, France and Germany are also two of only five countries worldwide where the alliance currently offers its businessflyer sales product, with around 2,000 small and medium sized enterprises registered in each of these two markets to take advantage of the discounts of up to 50 per cent on published fares that the product offers on their international travel in return for a more regular relationship with the alliance's carriers.

The advertising and communications programme, developed for oneworld by its newly appointed global lead agency TM Advertising, will focus on the alliance's offering to both the business and leisure market

It will include adverts in newspapers and magazines, posters and billboards at airports and other key locations with extensive on-line communications activity, linked to a special website established by the alliance to support this campaign.

These will promote the advantages, particularly the flexibility, offered by products such as businessflyer, and its consumer fares such as its oneworld Explorer round-the-world tickets, which, uniquely, are priced based on the number of continents visited rather than the mileage flown.

Vice-President Commercial Nicolas Ferri said: "oneworld's focus during the challenges facing our industry during the past five years has been on delivering our alliance services better than either of our competitors and supporting our member airlines in their efforts towards profitability, and the alliance has established a great reputation on both those two fronts. This has meant, however, that we have not had the resources to tell the world as much as we'd like about the great services and benefits we and our member airlines collectively offer.

"That is changing today, with our biggest investment in marketing communications for five years. We will be measuring the success of this programme very carefully to ensure it delivers our member airlines with what they want - great awareness for the alliance translating into more customers, more revenues and a bigger market share of these two important markets."

About oneworld

oneworld enables its members to offer their customers more services and benefits than any airline can provide on its own. These include a broader route network, opportunities to earn and redeem frequent flyer miles and points across the combined oneworld network and more airport lounges. Together, its members serve more than 600 destinations in some 135 countries.

oneworld is the only alliance to enable passengers to fly throughout its network, on any combination of carriers, using just electronic tickets. oneworld was voted the world's best airline alliance by readers of Business Traveller magazine for the second year running in its 2005 poll and the World's Leading Airline Alliance for the third year running in the latest World Travel Awards, based on votes cast by80,000 travel agency professionalsfrom more than 200 countries.

It is also the only alliance whose members reported collective profits in their latest full year.

注意: LAN affiliates LAN Ecuador and LAN Argentina are not members of oneworld.