Changing Expectations of the Premium Leisure Market
As business trips have turned into take-the-weekend, bring-your-partner blended leisure travel, so have business class cabins, and so have the way that airlines are trying to sell them. The interiors industry needs to make sure that the onboard product, both hard and soft, matches up to the expectations of these passengers, who — whether they are 18 or 81 — are sharing their expectations in words, photos and videos on their socials.
The expectation of luxury that many airlines set first intersects with reality at the airport, where strong reflection throughout the airline experience would be useful. Few carriers, even at their home hubs, provide a suitable level of ground experience to match the expectations they set their passengers.
Airlines need to make sure the check-in experience feels premium and differentiated, and work with airporst and screening provides to ensure that fast track security is available (and, indeed, faster than fast track). The lounge experience really needs to feel nicer than the Vino Volo, while premium boarding needs to be a premium experience, rather than just lining up their most lucrative passengers in a boiling/freezing jetway for fifteen minutes.
Aboard the aircraft, too, the choice of space, lighting, colour, materials and finish for the first impression need to be strong. This can be complicated, of course: space is at a premium and the lighting needs to be bright enough for passengers to discover their seat while not feeling too stark and hospital-like.
On the CMF side, the boring greige thermoplastic look is fortunately on the way out in many cases, but still too much of the cabin looks unlike any other experience that front cabin travellers have. With so much strong aesthetic work coming from hard product suppliers in recent years, how can the industry accelerate the adoption of these modern and attractive new elements for the seat area, and how can their refurbishment onto older products be spurred on as well?
Leaning towards the look, feel and texture of other premium experiences — beyond automotive, perhaps towards luxury hotel, fine restaurant, premium cruise line, or elegant boutique — might be instructive. These more liminal spaces are closer to the onboard experience and lend themselves better to adding a sense of identity than an automobile, which one might use for a matter of years. Drawing parallels from hotels, restaurants and boutiques can even open the door to some whimsy and fun: seat maker Stelia's storage elements inspired by jewelry boxes, for example, are both practical and delightful.
Yet function, too, is vital. The availability of "honeymoon" seats in staggered products is very popular with couples and families for obvious reasons of sharing a travel experience. At the same time, many modern business-class products exclude families with young children purely based on their function: parents can't sit close enough to their kids to be able to keep an eye on them and to help where necessary. Do airlines really want to leave their money on the table?
On the other end of the age spectrum, perhaps that capacitive touch control perhaps looks more streamlined (or, perhaps, is less expensive) than physical buttons, but is it clear enough in pictogram and in usability for grandma and grandpa to be able to figure out how to adjust their seat? At any age, is the label or layout clear enough for a traveller to be able to use it without fishing out their reading glasses, or is it a frustratingly fiddly experience?
Adding breadth of viewpoint and experience at the conception and design phase could be useful here. Who is the premium product for? What similar experiences do they have in their lives? What products and brands do they come back to? And how is the industry bringing those thoughts — and indeed those people — into consideration when creating cabins?