Seat Review - British Airways World Traveller Plus (Premium Economy)

A family emergency sent me to Berlin. The trip back (which was filled with stress and eventually relief) was on British Airways Premium Economy – branded World Traveller Plus. Due to the circumstances of the trip I was not in a good mood. This almost certainly impacted my attitude toward the flight and the product and therefore this review. That said, it is clear that World Traveller Plus (WTP) is closer to economy than business. It is a product a little above economy but well below business. The problem is that the pricing (absent a deal/special) is mid way between Business and Economy. Therefore without a deal or pricing special then WTP is not worth the money - especially if your frequent flyer status already grants you access to premium check in and lounges.

With that background, the BOOT rating for British Airways World Traveller Plus (International Premium Economy) is a 2 stars out of 6 or "Bad Seat". Here is the detailed review (Details and scoring system for airline seat reviews)

Getting on Board	Score 0
Not sure why and it was not a factor associated with World Traveller Plus, but this was the slowest boarding I have every experienced on a 747. BA was using one door rather than two but even so there was an annoying long delaying in boarding and chaos at the gate. It felt at times like a queue for Space Mountain at Disney land, each time I eventually came around a corner I thought that it would be the last one and I would get a glimpse of the door only to be disappointed and realise there was another stretch of the gate and corner to go around. My mood was also a factor due to the nature of the trip but also because Terminal 4 at Heathrow is an abandoned wasteland with construction, closed shops and poor facilities. The BA lounge is sub-par by any measure (against competitors, against other airports and against BA’s other offering in Terminal 5). On board there is no pre-flight drink or other offering from BA in this class. Combined this contributed to me reaching my seat in an even worse mood.
The Seat	Score 0.5
There is a reason why the product of Premium Economy or World Traveller Plus is tied in its definition to the Economy product. The seat is a step above economy but it is not a leap above. Put another way this is not a product that sits in between the Economy Class and Business Class (Club World) products. Instead it is a noticeable but incremental improvement on economy. The extra seven inches of leg room is nice but not transformative. This means that you are more comfortable but is does not make for an ability to sleep for an entire sector (ie 7-8 hours). There were also some very annoying parts to the seat. Something (I think either the VOD unit or lifejacket) was placed under the seat in front in such a way that it impeded my ability to freely put my feet under the seat in front. For someone of my size (185 cm) the foot rest is useless (too high) and the leg rest is meaningless (does not come out far enough) so the benefit of the extra leg room comes from the ability to put my feet under the seat in front. This is not as possible in this BA product as it should be. Also annoying is the location of the Entertainment (VOD) remote control. I had this issue on Qantas economy also. The controller is at thy height in the arm rest. Means that each time I moved my legs, I hit the controller which paused, fast forwarded or otherwise messed up the movie I was watching. In the end had to store the controller in the magazine flap in back of the seat in front which was annoying for me and the passenger next to me when she tried to go to the bathroom.
The Service	Score 0.5
The service provided is attentive, punctual and functional but it is also procedural. That means I felt I was on the staff’s timetable with limited flexibility. I would have liked to have received a little more proactive service such as bringing me more drinks and walking around looking for passengers needing help. The trick to long haul Europe to Australia is to stay awake for the first sector and sleep for the second. That way your longest period of sleep ends with the early morning landing into Australia. This means staying awake for 12-13 hours. To do that I need a lot of support in drinks and other care. I feel there could have been more. I did like the dedicated cabin aspect. Regardless of food, seat and service, having less people fighting for air, toilets and attention is valuable.
The Food	Score 0.0
As with the seat, the food is a step above economy but two or three below business class. It is a one tray service, all packaged and very carbohydrate heavy. The last meal of the trip (breakfast) after 9 hours of flying from Bangkok was a “deli box” – something that should be more at home on a Sydney to Melbourne flight than a meal designed to break a six hour break without food.
The Entertainment	Score 0.5
The Entertainment is solid enough with a fair selection of movies and TV. But BA VOD is a step behind the leaders in this space (Cathay and Singapore). Issues that detract from enjoyment of the system and place it a step below the leaders are: (1) the delay in starting – 15 minutes after seat belt sign is turned off; (2) the location of the controller (see above); and (3) turned off tow soon – 30 minutes before landing.
The BOOT factor	Score 0.5
It my BA Business Class review (Club World) Review I expressed my annoyance that World Traveller Plus is located between door one and two giving WTP passengers a head start off the plane over business class. When in business class this annoyed me. Now I am in WTP, it is a nice bonus. BA’s other WTP twist is their “raid the larder” snack program where business and premium economy passengers can access a mini bar area with drinks, fruit, candy and sandwiches. This used to be one of my favourite parts of the BA premium product experience. But on this flight it was not as good as I remember. It could have been my grumpy mood but it did not look as enticing as previous flights.
Final Score	2.0 - Bad Seat

Details and scoring system for airline seat reviews

thanks to caribb for the photo

WebInTravel: Pre-conference Podcast with the BOOT

Only a few weeks to go until the WebInTravel conference in Singapore (Oct 20-23 during ITB). A fifteen minute pre-conference podcast interview of me is now live. You can listen to it here. Themes covered into the interview include

• EveryYou and developing a recommendation of one;
• Social networking and the panel I am moderating at WIT called "Taming The Social Media Beast";
• Three areas of controversy I am expecting to be discussed at WIT on social networking being (1) whether or not there is loyalty in search and social networking (2) whether or not the form of social networking we have now (twitter, facebook) will be the form social networking takes in 5 years time and (3) whether or not you can build a brand through search/social networking;
  
• Major changes in the last year and my predictions for the next year; and
• My love of Singaporean chilli crab.

You can listen to the whole interview here.

Tnooz: first BOOT story on Tnooz live on Augmented Reality, EveryYou and more

My first story for the new Tnooz site is live called "Augmented Reality, mobile, search and (maybe) getting it wrong". As well as touching on Augmented reality and mobile apps I give even more background and analysis on my emerging EveryYou concept. Read the full story here.

Why travel companies aren't building top global brands

Interbrand and BusinessWeek have been publishing a list of the top 100 Global Brands for 9 years now. In preparing the the list for 2009 they have set up a hoop or two that a brand has to get through to be considered a global brand. These require more than just name recognition and sales. The test is that the brand

“must derive at least a third of its earnings from outside its home country, be recognizable beyond its base of customers, and have publicly available marketing and financial data.”

As they say in the BW article, this means a lot of big private or nationally contained companies missed out on the list. That said, in the list of 100 brands (topped again by Coca-Cola) there is not one travel company. I might be being narrow in my definition as the list contains Disney at number 10 and American Express at 22 but these are not pure play travel brands like a major US or Euro carrier (American, United, Continental, BA) or a mega chain (Hilton, Starwood, Marriot). I am trying to figure out why that is and what that it means. Despite travel being (by many measures) the largest industry on the planet and despite what feels like every other advertisement I see being from a travel company, according to Interbrand niche but high profile products like Ferrari (88th) and Moet & Chandon (82nd) are more valuable brands than the long list of travel companies that we could all debate as the biggest brands in travel.

We know that travel brands are well known – by that I mean recognised by consumers in prompted and (more importantly) unprompted awareness tests. We also know that there is a degree of brand loyalty in travel as evidenced by frequent flyer programs and flag carrier love ins. Though the first kind of loyalty (frequent flyer programs) is a “bought” loyalty and the second (flag carrier) is often tied to misplaced jingoistic behaviour. The reason for travel being missing from Interbrand’s list is therefore clearly not a “recognition” factor.

The main test in the BusinessWeek/Interbrand survey is the significance of the “earnings derived from the power of the brand…the brands effect on earnings relative to other…assets”. For the travel brand builders this means that BusinessWeek thinks that these 100 brands get dramatically better sales bumps just from their brands than the equally as well known travel brands. That the recognition and awareness of travel brands does not translate as much into sales assistance as for equally as recognisable non-travel brands.

If this conclusion is right, then we need to think about why this is and whether or not this means that travel companies are worse at marketing than we thought. Or - is there something about travel that makes it harder to build a brand that in tech, fast moving consumer goods and luxury brands (the majority of the list).

In analysing this I turned to thinking about the brand battle between Coca-Cola (ranked 1st) and Pepsi (ranked 23rd). Each throws hundreds of millions of dollars at marketing products with subtle but not extreme differences (much - dare I say - like a lot of travel products). One theory is that the travel consumer is more fickle than the cola consumer (as a proxy for most fast moving consumer good) because they have more options to choose from and given the high cost more reason to change supplier. Clearly there is some loyalty within the travel consumers but I consider it more like a “basket of loyalty” rather than a dedicated loyalty. That is, consumers have a basket or collection of brands in their minds and are open to buying any product in that basket. For example I will fly to Europe on any of Qantas, Cathay, Singapore, BA and Virgin. Sure I have one that I would like to fly more than the others but for a specific trip the decision point between these brands is price and schedule. Which one is cheaper and at the right time. With Coke and Pepsi schedule and price are not issues. There is usually no shortage of supply (schedule) and price is usually equal between the two products. In the case of the luxury brands like Ferrari price is still not an issue as people are not choosing based on price and schedule/supply is not an issue (if you want one and can pay for it they will get you one). The question is then, can a travel brand break out of a consumers “basket” such that it can develop the same psychological hold on a consumer that a cola, luxury or soap brand can. A hold that can overcome the price and schedule/availability advantage that another brand has in the basket.

I can’t think of one and therefore understand why there are no travel brands in Interbrand's list of top 100 global brands. Can you?

Tnooz: The BOOT joins Tnooz contributor team

Travel industry journalist and uber blogger Kevin May left Travolution in August with a promise of a swift return to online travel , technology and digital media news and opinion. We now know that he is busily working towards the launch of a Tnooz as the new means for informing the industry on what is and is not worth knowing about. Gene Quinn (Chair of PhoCusWright) is joining Kevin as the Tnooz CEO. Dennis Schaal (another online travel blogging A-lister) has signed on as Tnooz Nth American Correspondent.

Tnooz has also signed up a selection of bloggers and industry commentators to join their global contributor team. This group will prepare original Tnooz commentary and analsys content The BOOT has signed on and is ready for action. Does not mean and end to the BOOT - this will still be the home of my writing and rantings. But it does mean that I will be doing dedicated/unique content for the soon to be launched Tnooz along with other industry commentators such as
Alex Bainbridge
Stephan Ekbergh
Jeremy Head
Troy Thompson
Stephen Joyce
Siew Hoon Yeow
Claud Bernard
Charlie Li

Put your name and email into the fields at Tnooz.com if you want to know when the launch will be. Also ways to follow on facebook, twitter and linkedin

Anklet to the BOOT: "Dadda the world has changed colour"

This is what we woke up to in Sydney yesterday morning at dawn care of 100km per hour winds bringing dust from the south west of the state. My daughter (an Anklet in BOOT-speak) stormed into my room to wake me up and share how the world had simply changed colour. In case you don't know the shot is of an iconic but struggling fun pier on Sydney Harbour (think our version of NY's Coney Island).

hat tip to taebeast for the photo and PaddyPlasterer who sent it to me

EveryYou: Individuation and going beyond the Long Tail theory

This post is part of my developing series on the EveryYou concept– the ability we are developing to create a specific and targeted recommendation of one based on the unique combination of desires, needs and interests of each individual at any moment in time (first post here).

It is Internet marketing heresy to say anything that might contradict the gospel of the Long Tail – Chris Anderson’s now famous 2004 book on how the removal of the constraint of needing to support physical inventory and location (ie moving from stores to sites and physical to bits) has expanded marketing and sales opportunities beyond items that have achieved mass popularity to the niche and obscure. Anderson says this will result in demand shifting shift from the Head (mass popularity) to the Tail (niche products). But in my introduction to the EveryYou concept I said that one of the advantages we now have from the four dimensions of data available to us is that…

“We could kill off the head, body and long tail of sales and replace it with a sale of one, a market of one for the EveryYou.”

It is dangerous to be a heretic in Internet folk law but thankfully I found some support for my blasphemy in a recent article from Knowledge@Wharton called “Rethinking the Long Tail Theory: How to Define 'Hits' and 'Niches'”

In this article professor Serguei Netessine and doctoral student Tom F. Tan looked at Netflix data to see whether or not the growth in niche or tail sales was proving that the tail was catching the head. They concluded that

“The presence of the Long Tail effect might be less universal than one may be led to believe."

Instead of seeing the death of the 80:20 rule, Netessine and Tan found that the growth in demand for the top 20% of the movies (ie the head) was faster than the rest (the Tail) (note that the data was comparing 2005 to 2000). One of their conclusions was that the challenge with internet distribution was not the supply side (making digital inventory available on the web) or the traffic side (bringing people to the web) but was the discovery side (getting the people to find the thing they did not know they were looking for). Netessine and Tan say

“product variety has been skyrocketing in the Internet age, and therefore more and more products can be left unnoticed by consumers, or are being discovered very slowly, even though the customer base is also expanding."

This is exactly the point of the EveryYou principle adds value. The Long Tail is based on matching the unconstrained supply of the Internet to niche demand. What is missing is that the niche demand in Long Tail theory is constrained because it depends on knowledge. That is, someone can only demand a niche product if they know about it and believe that they like it (or could like it). For unconstrained niche demand you need to have a systematic and automated means of making trusted and targeted recommendations to someone. This is the EveryYou principle. Using the four dimensions of data we now have on people interacting with our sites (breadth), the different things an individual does on a site (depth), the interrelation between the data we have one person and others (context) and the freely provided data we have unrelated to transactions (community) we can develop a specific and targeted recommendation of one based on the unique combination of desires, needs and interests of each individual at any moment in time.

Without the recommendation part the tail is undiscoverable and therefore demand constrained. Through the EveryYou principle you don’t need to think about a head, body or tail as you can use technology and social change to target each recommendation and individual as a single, individuated marketing activity.

More on EveryYou soon.

PS - thanks to Madame BOOT for sending through the article