Buyer Power: Westjet And Air Canada

Westjet came into the air travel business in 1996, offering fares up to 50% cheaper than there competition. They strived for an excellent relationship between the employee and the employer by creating an ecstatic, friendly work environment. Westjet is one of the most successful airlines as it did start out with the most start up capital any airline has ever experienced, as well as keeping their debt to a minimum. With such commercial success, Westjet was questioned with their actions towards Air Canada as one of the founders employed a travel agent to find out certain information about Air Canada which gave them a competitive advantage so they knew exactly what price would be a noticeable difference, which would attract

Airlines are now able to expand their outreach directly to consumers through e-commerce. For example, airlines like Qantas are able to introduce ticketless travel through the use of technology (Thompson and Gamble, 2012).

In order to assess the corporate governance performance in WestJet over the long term, we are looking into three different fundamental corporate governance issues:

WestJet is one of the fastest growing airlines in the world and also highly preferred by local people in Canada. WestJet is the second largest Canadian air carrier. Its beginning was humble - with five destinations with 225 employees with 3 used Boeing 737-200 in Feb 29, 1996.

WestJet develop their IT operation early and force them get the lead in the aviation businesses. However, as the global economic and the change of people’s demand, the strategic plan of WestJet need to be change to follow the change of the world. Compare with other aviation business, the IT structure of WestJet is small and keeps running on their pervious operation before Smith join into the organization. There are some risks coming out if WestJet continue these IT operations.

It’s not uncommon to see Gregg Saretsky, President and CEO of WestJet Airlines Ltd., handing out cupcakes to employees. It’s a company known for its culture of creative engagement.“Leading doesn’t always mean that the decisions come from the top. At WestJet, the learning for me was that a lot of the good stuff comes from the bottom.Pugliese said WestJet’s focus on building relationships with employees is one of its competitive

Air Canada’s early strategy was to grow the business, with minimal concern about their staff members and customers. Without any benefits or rewards their staff felt underappreciated. Their customers felt as though their feedback wasn’t being heard but in the eyes of Air Canada as long as their business was expanding, they were satisfied.

Westjet Airlines has achieved considerable success in the past few years, winning estimable rewards related to its service, gaining loyal customers and, of course, increasing market shares. It devotes to a “high-value, low-fare airline” which provides humanized services to customers. Another pride of Westjet is its IT, which designs all systems in-house and is operated based on the business demands.

The transatlantic airline market between the United States and Europe is the single largest intercontinental market in the world, with rigorous competition between dozens of airlines. The transatlantic market consists of passengers, both seeking business and pleasure needs. Within the first year of offering transatlantic flights, higher income professionals travelling for business purposes will be targeted, along with families and students travelling on a J-1 visa. As the market is heavily competitive, targeted segments such as families and students will be relatively elastic to a change in price, with hope of finding the best deal. If Ryanair can replicate its hugely successful model, offering savings on landing fee

Of the total travel market only 1% was generated from the online travel market, and consumers still depended on customer call centers to confirm payment status. To counteract the risks it is important that Lucky Air create an effective business-consumer-business model that will do the obvious and draw consumers to their site and make an online purchase of airfare. To draw in consumers Lucky Air will need to focus on Web 2.0, which is the unique feature or features of e-commerce and the Internet coming together as applications and social media technologies. Web 2.0 will allow for a better online experience with inter-human connections, consumer interacted blogs and the staff to constantly monitor the site to provide consumer feedback. Web 2.0 is crucial to providing customer relationship management. Promoting reviews from consumers in regards to destinations and airline experience are important so the consumer can feel they are important enough to expose the truth from other consumers even negative remarks. But the single most important part of focusing on e-commerce is the ability to provide a online experience and advanced technology that enables customer self-service without the need for multiple customer call centers. Customers should be able to pay for fares, cancel fares, use a safe payment method that can verify a credit card, check on the status of flights and use rewards programs

In today's harsh economic times, consumers are changing the way that they shop, even for travel packages. Currently, most travel sites are only offering extreme deals in an online auction format, skipping the notion of flash sales as a way to drive potential revenue. Live Flight gives the consumer the huge discount they want without the hassle of an online auction. It is a service that announces a flash sale and slowly increases in price as the time progresses. The site meets the needs of a variety of consumer demographics, as everyone in this harsh economy is looking for a discount. Live Flight provide them with enormous discounts for their favorite travel packages, but also drives traffic to the Flight Centre site which could drive more sales on normal priced products.

The travel industry was revolutionized in 1960 when air travel became affordable. As more people could afford to fly, there was a heavy reliance on travel agents to act as intermediaries between consumers and airlines. The process for booking a flight was complicated, which is why a vast majority of people who flew would consult a travel agent. This process would involve the travel agent, contacting the airline via telephone in the hopes of getting the ideal flight date, or a date suitable for their client. If it was not for the travel agents acting as an intermediary between airline and consumer, the airline industry would have suffered because consumers would not have wanted to go through the hassle of booking a flight. Since travel agents played a critical role in the success of the airline industry, we compensated them with commission for every client they got to fly with us.

Flight Centre is an Australian based travel agency which created a revolution in the travel industry through its model in which volume has got more importance than margin in gaining profitability. It is one among the world’s largest travel agency with more than 2000 stores around the globe. There are more than 90 stores for Flight Centre in UK (www.studentflight.co.uk). Each Flight Centre store operates independently with a team of specialist travel experts offering travel advices with unbeatable prices to its customers (www.flightcentre.co.uk). Flight Centre operates in a highly competitive market which has a

5. The bargaining power of consumers has been significantly high after the economic recession of 2000 and 9/11 terrorist attacks. The advent of online reservation systems offered by all the carriers, and the availability of websites that offered comparative shopping tools has increased the consumer choices. Finally, a large number of unused seats in

The Priceline Group is the world’s leading provider of online travel, travel related reservations, and search services ("Overview - The Priceline Group," n.d.). Through The Priceline Group’s online travel agent, they are able to provide service to consumers, as well as local partners, in over 200 countries ("Overview - The Priceline Group," n.d.). The Priceline Group is made up of six primary brands: Booking.com, priceline.com, KAYAK, agoda.com, rentalcars.com, and OpenTable ("Overview - The Priceline Group," n.d.). The company first launched their business in the United State in 1998 under the priceline.com brand and since then they have expanded and acquired Booking.com, KAYAK, agoda.com, rentalcars.com, and OpenTable all of these brands, are independently managed and operated under The Priceline Group ("Overview - The Priceline Group," n.d.).