By Kevin Wilkeson, PubClub.com Travel Blogger
Here’s one way to combat passengers’ complaints about airlines’ baggage fees and charging for extra legroom: give them free beer!
That’s what Air Canada is doing and not just in premium seats, but in all seats, including coach class.
“Food and beverage just tend to have a disproportionate impact on customer satisfaction, more than any other attribute of our products and services,” said Scott O’Leary, vice president of loyalty and product.
That’s a sound strategy, especially for beer-loving Canadians. It is also offering free wine. And the beer will be good – Molson Canadian or some other quality brew – because Canadian beer is good. It would not be the low-grade Bud Light or Coors Light you would get on an American airline. Of course, no American-based airline would offer free beer in the first place. For one thing, as anyone who has been to a bar knows, some people in this country don’t handle their beer as well as other people. Wine, tho, could work. People act more mellow with wine and rowdy beer drinkers don’t generally drink wine.
The airline won’t budge on baggage fees – that’s just not something that’s easily waived or given to everybody without having to have some impact on ticket price,” O’Leary said – but it is using beer (and wine) to try and keep customers happy. And to bring more customers to Air Canada, which needed to do something to make up for the decline in passengers to certain locations, mainly in the U.S., due to anti-American (or anti-Trump, really) feelings.
“Our ability to offer a degree of differentiation that sets us apart from literally every other airline that we’re competing with on those routes was very important to us,” O’Leary said.
This story was written by a human (one who has drank a lot of Canadian beer) with no assistance from AI or ChatGTP.
Leave a Reply