Austrian GlobeAir has completed an industry first B2B marketing campaign that significantly boosted its sales during the summer. Having started in June of this year, the B2B reward programme ran until September, and by sharing the latest booking figures for each broker twice monthly among the operator's most loyal broker partners, GlobeAir encouraged a competitive 'air race' environment during the seasonal summer peak.

In the business jet sector this is the first time that an operator has decided to disclose its booking performances and sales volume, providing its broker customers with meaningful benchmarking information. The campaign aimed to provide brokers with more transparency than ever before.

As a result, GlobeAir enjoyed a 23 per cent increase in flights compared to 2014.

“The very light jet sector is quite fragmented, and when it comes to booking, price still plays an important role in the decision making process,” comments CEO Bernhard Fragner. “We want our clients to choose us because we are worthy, not because we compete on price. Our strategy is to have sustainable growth without jeopardising our reputation. I'm very happy that the market is reacting positively and with enthusiasm to our initiatives and loyalty programmes.”

Since its launch, GlobeAir has been investing in added value relationships with its customers. “We are witnessing an important evolution in the way modern travellers interact with private aviation,” Fragner continues. “They expect to be able to book online, especially up to the midsize jets sector. An important indicator about how the industry is evolving is that that our biggest revenue channel is generated by online platforms, as the top three winners of our reward programme prove.”

PrivateFly and Victor, which ranked in first and second place respectively, have each been awarded with a Fiat 500 for their results. Adam Twidell, PrivateFly CEO states: “The PrivateFly team was delighted to be the overall winners of this campaign. During an exceptionally busy summer period for us, many of our customers chose GlobeAir for Mustang flights due to the winning combination of price, booking speed from our tech integration, and service from its pilots and crew.”

GlobeAir has also allocated 15,000 hours of flight inventory to mobile chartering app JetSmarter, valued at $50 million over five years, in order to optimise its fleet and reduce 'dead heads'.

The joint venture means that JetSmarter will add GlobeAir's 12 Citation Mustangs to its JetDeals section, giving its client base access to more than 1,500 European airports including those with short runways.

“JetSmarter is radically moder-nising the booking process for private jets, bringing efficiency, simplicity and accessibility to luxury travel,” says Fragner. “The combination of JetSmarter's unique mobile technology with the reliability, comfort and safety of our fleet will provide consumers with a highly sought after travel experience.”

The operator's fleet has reduced the number of empty legs it flies via extensive IT support, but still has an average empty ratio of between 25 and 28 per cent. Fragner believes that JetSmarter's unique selling concept, coupled with a focus on dead heads, will have a positive impact on his business. “This technology is fully integrated with our in-house booking system. We are granting access via our own application programming interface. This interfacing to our system for quoting, booking and scheduling is open to any business partner and is already implemented by many online platforms.

“In 2015 we have experienced a huge increase in bookings through successful online platforms, and one of our best performers has been JetSmarter. Our current fleet is well utilised; we see a strong growth in the year-to-date, and our forecast for 2015 is an average utilisation of 630 hours per aircraft. We clearly see our business model working and we want to scale up even further.”