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Amid rising pressure on profitability, Jet Airways is betting big on students travelling abroad to rake in revenues.
Jet Airways has been running a special programme for students travelling abroad since 2009 but in the last few years, the segment has seen a massive growth for the full fare carrier.
“In the last couple of years, we’ve taken our EduJetter programme completely online, making it easier for students to avail themselves benefits of the programme. That said, we’ve also added more benefits by tying up with different partners,” Belson Coutinho, Senior Vice-President, Marketing, Innovation and Commerce, told BusinessLine .
According to the airline, the changes have already started reaping benefits for the airline.
“We’ve seen 30 per cent year-on-year growth in students flying through the EduJetter programme in FY17. That growth further propelled last year to 50 per cent year-on-year in FY 18. We expect at least 50 per cent year on year growth in the current fiscal as well,” Coutinho said.
Under the EduJetter programme, Jet Airways offers additional baggage allowance of 23 kg.
The airline also offers 7,500 bonus miles.
Jet Airways is also tying up with external partners to sweeten the deal.
This includes a fee waiver on the Cox & Kings Students Card that comes with discounted forex rates on EduJetter flyers.
The airline has partnered with UniConnect to offer special rates for international SIM cards.
The airline is targeting the social media with year-round campaigns targeting this segment.
“About 5 per cent of our entire digital marketing spend happens on this segment. We expect to expand this further this year as we see direct return on investment on every such engagement with students,” Belson said. An estimated 5.5 lakh students fly abroad every year on student visa, a segment targeted by Jet Airways through the EduJetter programme. Jet Airways hopes to get a lion’s share of this through its increased engagement with the student community.
Besides EduJetter, the airline runs another programme for small and medium businesses called GlobalLinker.
There are over 1 lakh SMEs registered on the platform and according to the airline, over 20,000 of them actively book tickets every year.
Jet Airways now plans to reap some ancillary revenues from the platform by charging partners for offering their solutions for the community as well as allowing for advertisements.
Correction
This article was amended on June 8, 2018. An earlier version misspelled EduJetter as EduSetter.
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