Iberia to showcase new commercial and customer-focused initiatives at Fitur tourism trade fair in Madrid

• www.iberia.com has been “socialised” by connecting its users with Iberia’s more than 1.6 million followers on the social networks.

• In January Iberia has trimmed some 10 minutes from minimum flight connection times at its T4 hub in Madrid-Barajas, enabling it to offer 1,200 additional connections.

Madrid, Spain, 2014-1-23 — /travelprnews.com/ — At this year’s Fitur tourism trade fair now in progress in Madrid, Iberia is showcasing the new commercial and customer-focused initiatives taken in recent months as part of its Transformation Plan, including the airline’s new logo, livery, and corporate image. “Iberia’s new brand image symbolises a new stage for the company”, comments Iberia’s Commercial director Marco Sansavini.

New aircraft and cabins

Iberia is renewing its long-haul fleet and installing all new Business and Economy cabin interiors. To date it has acquired five new A330s and refitted six A340/600s with the new interiors. This week it is taking delivery of a sixth A330 already equipped with the new interiors and the new logo and livery.

Both seating sections have more comfortable and ergonomic seats, and those in Business Class recline to become perfectly flat beds nearly 2 metres long. There are also new individual entertainment systems based on 15.4” touch screens in Business and 9” screens in Economy. The advanced and intuitive system give passengers a huge choice of late-release films, popular television series, news programmes, video games, and as many as 400 music albums from every period.

New communications technology aboard Iberia’s long-haul aircraft will soon enable all passengers to connect to the Internet and to send SMS messages from their own devices, via Wi-Fi and GSM connectivity.
Customer surveys show that passengers appreciate the innovations –quality perception of Economy Class has climbed by 14%, while the proportion of customers who would recommend Iberia’s long-haul services rose by 8.7% for Business Class and by 31.2% for Economy.

www.iberia.com: a digital revolution

Iberia’s website has an entirely new look and is much more intuitive to use, facilitating interactions with the customer, and offering products à la carte and individualised treatment.

Iberia has also “socialised” the website, connecting its users to the more than 1.6 million followers on the social networks. It also boasts the industry’s first “social” flight finder, called “Fly & Friends”, and the “Social Seating” tool, allowing customers to choose seatmates based on shared interests, etc.

Another innovation is the pioneering “MyBagTag” system, allowing passengers to download and print their own baggage tags at home to save time at the airport, for which it received a Future Travel Award for “Best Check-in Initiative”, plus recognition from IATA. The service is currently available on domestic flights and is soon to be extended to all Iberia flights with connections.

Iberia’s T4 hub, the world’s third-best terminal

In recent months Iberia has introduced several changes in order to facilitate, improve and speed passengers’ airport experience, adding new check-in machines that can issue boarding passes and luggage tags in about 30 seconds.

Iberia has also introduced “group boarding” to simplify and speed boarding, and giving priority to passengers with reduced mobility, families with children, and Premium customers.

Iberia and the Spanish airport authority AENA are now collaborating on a project to offer a special rest area to Business Class passengers arriving on long-haul flights.

These and other initiatives have helped Iberia’s T4 hub in Madrid to be ranked the world’s third best airline terminal in a worldwide Skytrax survey, and second in a study by the AirXperience forum.

World’s third most punctual airline

According to FlightStats, Iberia is the third-most punctual of major international carriers, with more than 88% of its flights in 2013 taking off at the scheduled time.

As of this January, Iberia, Iberia Express, and Air Nostrum have cut their minimum flight connection times at T4 by 10 minutes to 45 minutes (55 minutes for connections involving the T4 satellite terminal). This is enabling Iberia group airlines to offer 1,200 additional connections, for a weekly total of some 21,500 connecting flights to domestic and international destinations.

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Iberia’s new brand image symbolises a new stage for the company