Airline Passengers Demanding Better Smartphone Services

Airlines and airports will have to gear themselves up to support airline passengers demanding to use their smartphones to check-in online and get flight and airport gate information, according airline IT provider SITA.
The number of smartphones carried by airline passengers has doubled over the last year making them an important tool for travellers wishing to check-in remotely, access flight information on the go, or use an emerging range of flight-related applications, according to the company's annual Air Transport World Passenger Self-Service Survey.
Possession of a smartphone has jumped from 28 percent in last year's survey to 54 percent overall this year, and 74 percent of first/business class respondents and frequent flyers (10-plus round trips per year) were carrying one. At the world's busiest airport, Atlanta, 75 percent of survey respondents were carrying a smartphone.
Among respondents carrying a smartphone, 73 percent would like to use mobile boarding passes while 17 percent had already used them at least once. High service availability at Frankfurt Airport has generated the highest usage, with 25 percent of respondents having used mobile boarding passes once or more.
The survey found that 31 percent of smartphone holders use mobile check-in frequently or occasionally. But many airports don't have widespread facilities to process electronic boarding passes.
The Passenger Self-Service Survey is carried out using a "representative sample" of the 283.5 million passengers who pass through six of the world's leading airport hubs. These include Abu Dhabi, Beijing, Frankfurt, Atlanta, Mumbai, and Sao Paulo. SITA is an IT provider co-operative owned by the airlines and other players.
Francesco Violante, SITA CEO, said: "We are now entering the era of the mobile-centric passenger, who is not only able to manage his or her journey independently but also expects personal and timely communication from airlines, airports and other providers of travel-related services."
Over 50 percent of first/business class travellers and frequent flyers receive SMS notifications about their flights. Over 80 percent of all respondents were not interested in receiving information on shopping deals over mobile devices.
Over half of all checked-in bags are still dropped at a check-in counter and 20 percent of passengers state this as the main reason for not using self-service check-in.
Half of the world's top airlines are spending more this year on IT and telecoms, according to the recent annual SITA/Airline Business Airline IT Trends Survey.
Airlines said they would be spending more on areas such as mobile transaction systems, support for commercial social networking efforts, virtualisation technology and cloud computing. The total airline IT and telecoms spend predicted for 2011 is $20 billion (£12.5 billion).

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10 tips for questionnaires on employee motivation

1. What is the 'primary aim' of your company?
Your employees may be more motivated if they understand the primary aim of your business. Ask questions to establish how clear they are about your company's principles, priorities and mission.

2. What obstacles stop employees performing to best effect?
Questionnaires on employee motivation should include questions about what employees are tolerating in their work and home lives. The company can eliminate practices that zap motivation.

3. What really motivates your staff?
It is often assumed that all people are motivated by the same things. Actually we are motivated by a whole range of factors. Include questions to elicit what really motivates employees, including learning about their values. Are they motivated by financial rewards, status, praise and acknowledgment, competition, job security, public recognition, fear, perfectionism, results...

4. Do employees feel empowered?
Do your employees feel they have job descriptions that give them some autonomy and allow them to find their own solutions or are they given a list of tasks to perform and simply told what to do?

5. Are there any recent changes in the company that might have affected motivation?
If your company has made redundancies, imposed a recruitment freeze or lost a number of key people this will have an effect on motivation. Collect information from employees about their fears, thoughts and concerns relating to these events. Even if they are unfounded, treat them with respect and honesty.

6. What are the patterns of motivation in your company?
Who is most motivated and why? What lessons can you learn from patches of high and low motivation in your company?

7. Are employee goals and company goals aligned?
First, the company needs to establish how it wants individuals to spend their time based on what is most valuable. Secondly this needs to be compared with how individuals actually spend their time. You may find employees are highly motivated but about the "wrong" priorities.

8. How do employees feel about the company?
Do they feel safe, loyal, valued and taken care of? Or do they feel taken advantage of, dispensable and invisible? Ask them what would improve their loyalty and commitment.

9. How involved are employees in company development?
Do they feel listened to and heard? Are they consulted? And, if they are consulted, are their opinions taken seriously? Are there regular opportunities for them to give feedback?

10. Is the company's internal image consistent with its external one? Your company may present itself to the world as the 'caring airline', 'the forward thinking technology company' or the 'family hotel chain'. Your employees would have been influenced, and their expectations set, to this image when they joined your company. If you do not mirror this image within your company in the way you treat employees you may notice motivation problems. Find out what the disparity is between the employees image of the company from the outside and from the inside.

Source:Internet

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