stated that BA was also suffering from a series of decisions by the
Government that had increased competition on its route network without
any compensatory access to the protected US market.
Corporate customers
One of the reasons BA was also losing share of international traffic was a
new attitude from the corporate air travel users. Corporate clients began to
demand that travel agents assist in reducing travel spend. One method
was for the travel agents to pass over a slice of their ticket commission in
return for volume deals. As a result, the agents started to lose their role as
distributors and in 1991 BA realized that it needed to start working directly
with large corporate clients.
The task was to identify corporations ‘willing and able’ to enter into
deals with BA, companies motivated and willing to control and direct
travel expenditure throughout their organizations. At the time an AMEX
survey showed that about 10 per cent of companies controlled their own
travel arrangements.
The primary method employed to increase corporate use was volume
discounts. Company Executive Club card agreements with lower thresh-
olds than individual executive club cards were also offered. The other
approach was a dialogue with key corporate individuals through direct
Creating and implementing relationship marketing strategies 479
706050403020100
1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995%300025002000150010005000Break-even overall load factor (%) Aircraft utilization
(average hours
per aircraft p.a.)Overall load factor (%)Figure 6.2.4 Efficiency measures.