Saudi Arabia Airlines has embarked on a targeted campaign to by-pass travel agents and increase the number of passengers booking their tickets online.
Currently only three percent of ticket sales are done through the airline’s website.
The campaign will focus on boosting this figure to 25 percent and encouraging passengers to select their seats and receive boarding passes through the internet.
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Mohammed Yousuf Jan, general manager of the carrier’s call centre told Arab News: “We expect that 25 percent of sales would take place through the website by the year 2013.”
“Our website is much developed now and you can do your booking, get your ticket and your boarding pass within five minutes, especially for domestic flights. They need not call us if there are no seats available on the website.”
But travel agents in Saudi Arabia say the strategy is unlikely to be successful.
According to Majed Kaaki, general manager, Elaf Travel & Tours – one of Saudi Arabia’s leading tourism companies – the airline will struggle to achieve more than “10 percent” of its sales through the website.
“E-commerce is still not very successful in Saudi Arabia, and people feel more comfortable to contact travel agencies to make their travel arrangements rather than book online,” said Kaaki.
Kaaki added that only a minority of airline customers in Saudi Arabia have the capacity to book tickets using the web: “Saudia should consider the fact that 60 percent of sales come through business travellers from corporate houses, while only 40 percent are from walk-in passengers. Corporate houses always prefer to deal with travel agencies to get credit facilities. And out of the 40 percent walk-in passengers, we assume that barely half of these people have internet access and credit card facilities to book online.”
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