Romana Parvi, Country Manager – India, Jazeera Airways
Kuwait-based low cost carrier Jazeera Airways has recently launched a good connection from New Delhi to Georgian capital Tblisi. The airline is looking to ramp up operations in India and exploring new leisure destinations ideal for holiday and MICE.
How has your presence been in Indian market so far?
The decision to operate to five Indian cities (Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Kochi, Hyderabad and New Delhi was based on the allocations available under the bilateral agreements between the two countries. We are happy with the airline’s growth in India and are positive about Jazeera’s prospects in the Indian market. We closed 2018 with a cumulative Seat Factor (SF) of 82 pc while 2019 closed at robust SF of 86 pc. Our lowest SF on any India route is 85 pc and the highest SF we see is over 90 pc.
Besides our point to point traffic, which was roughly around 70 pc in 2019, there has been a significant increase in the number of passengers travelling on Jazeera’s network to leisure and MICE destinations such as London, Istanbul, Baku, Tbilisi, Bodrum and Cairo amongst the other 37 destinations on the J9 network.
Your airline offers connections from India to numerous offbeat destinations such as Kyrgyzstan and Azerbaijan. Is there a plan behind this?
The passenger traffic between Kuwait City and Tbilisi (the capital of Georgia) increased by 45 pc in 2017 compared to 2016. Therefore, we were interested to operate into the Georgian aviation market. On the other hand, Osh, the second-largest city in Kyrgyzstan offers over 3,000 years of history to explore and is another new option for leisure travellers. Osh also has a majority of the Muslim population and we help to serve the customers from Kyrgyzstan, especially those going on a religious pilgrimage.
With Kuwait’s unique geographical advantage and with our A320 neos and ceos aircraft, we continue to expand to the increasingly popular and affordable(Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) destinations. In recent years there is a growing demand amongst the Indian travellers to visit the CIS destinations; be it for leisure or for MICE purpose. Azerbaijan (Baku) has witnessed an 80 pc increase in tourism from India in 2019 with an increasing number of Indian travellers taking an interest in visiting the country.
Passengers can now choose from three fare categories in Economy Class: Light, Value or Extra, each providing a set of services to meet their needs
How you added other products and services to complement the airline?
In August 2019, we launched our holiday service, Jazeera Holidays, in partnership with Sharjah-based Cozmo Travel, offering customers travel packages to leading leisure destinations in the Middle East, India and Europe. Flights on Jazeera Airways are included in all the packages. It is a platform that enables customers to book great value holidays and with this new service, we continue to enhance our customers’ travel experiences, giving them more choice for their leisure travel.
Do you have any special offers for the Indian market?
As we continue to expand and offer our customers more places to visit, we are focusing on enabling them to choose how they want to travel. Having moved to an all-economy cabin, we are pleased to introduce our new fare options, seat selection and priority service to give our passengers maximum freedom to customise their travel experiences.
Now, our passengers can choose from three fare categories in Economy Class: Light, Value or Extra, each providing them with a set of services to meet their needs. Passengers of Economy Class Light, the lowest fare category, are allowed a carry-on and a small bag and can add on the services they require for their travel itinerary. Passengers of Economy Class Value are additionally allowed 20 kg in checked-in baggage allowance, while passengers of Economy Class Extra are allowed 30 kg, priority check-in and the ability to choose from the preferred seats located on rows 4 to 10. Jazeera is the first airline in the Middle East to offer a Priority Service they can pre-purchase online. The new Priority Service provides passengers with a faster travel experience: access to priority check-in, priority baggage and priority boarding.
What are the new routes in India that you are looking at?
As far as the expansion plans in India are concerned, we are currently restricted by the bilateral agreements between the two countries. However, talks are going on between the two sides to increase the level of operations. Once that is concluded, we would definitely like to fly to many more cities in India.
How do you see the competition on the Indian air traffic space? Who is your biggest competition? What is your strategy to beat the heat?
As a low-cost carrier we not only compete aggressively for existing traffic, we break monopolies and seek to expand the market into areas that are currently not in place. With our new Airbus neos that can fly six and a half hours, we will continue to explore markets that are under-serviced.
What are the marketing and promotional activities you are planning for Jazeera Airways in the Indian market to reach out to a wider clientele?
While participating on common platforms like OTM and other prominent trade events pan-India is planned for 2020, we will also organise FAM trips for our agents to our leisure destinations namely Istanbul, London and Tbilisi from Jazeera’s online stations in India. For our customers booking on our website, we periodically run events and sales such as Mega March Sales and Super Sales of over 500,000 seats in September.
What challenges do you see while operating in the Indian market?
The challenge for us is to satisfy the growing demand. We have a million Indian expats living in Kuwait and they would like to have direct flights to their home cities.
Published in India Outbound Magazine February 2020
