Transavia starts a new chapter

Transavia aims to be the most affordable and accessible airline company in Europe. Today, the company is therefore presenting a new brand identity and ambitious goals for the future. Hospitality and customer service – regardless of whether the customer is at the airline counter, in the airplane, or online – are the key elements behind its ambition to grow the business to serve 10 million leisure and business passengers per year.

Strategic choices

“Transavia is a dynamic company that has kept up with the spirit of the times over the last 50 years. We are continuing to do so by building on our past strengths and our core DNA,” explains Managing Director – Chairman Mattijs ten Brink. “But we’re adding and integrating new elements and now starting on a new chapter. Before doing so, we listened very closely to what our employees and customers had to say. We have now made some clear choices and sharpened our strategic focus for the coming years.”

Transavia aims to become the number one airline company in terms of affordability and accessibility and to be a leader in the area of hospitality and service, including online services. Our primary focus is always on our passengers, and we go the extra mile to continue giving them the best possible service. Everyone is welcome at Transavia. We do not distinguish between passengers on board; all passengers are treated equally.

The customer experience provided by Transavia deserves a broader public. Business travellers are increasingly opting for economy flights, so we are broadening our focus to include business travellers as well as holiday travellers.

We need to ensure that we are always optimally accessible wherever our passengers are, regardless of whether they are at the airline counter, in the airplane, or online. Accordingly, we are optimizing the online aspects of our customers’ travel experience by building a new digital platform.

We are the only low-cost airline company that is continuing to focus on tour operators and, together with our partners, we are continuing to develop new products.

Our success depends upon our employees, and of course we are continuing to invest in them. After all, they are the ones who can best communicate the Transavia message and experience.

We aim to be accessible and responsive in all respects, including ticket prices and airport locations. We know what our passengers want from us, and sometimes they simply want a lower ticket price. In order to be able to offer such a lower price, we need to increase our efficiency and lower our costs. This means reducing expenses and further streamlining our processes.

Concrete targets

By making these clear and transparent choices, the airline company aims to again become profitable starting in 2017. “But that’s not our only goal,” says Mattijs ten Brink. “In the long term, we want to expand our business to serve 10 million passengers per year and generate an annual turnover of 1 billion euros. This means expanding our fleet to include a total of 40 airplanes, as that is what we will need in order to maintain our number one position as a point-to-point airline company in Europe. And if you also take into account our ambitions for Transavia in France, we should be able to double those numbers.”

New brand identity

Transavia aims to play a leading role in the areas of hospitality, service, online communication & support, and new products. In order to make it easier to visualize this change, the company is also presenting a new brand identity and house style today. Here again, Transavia is building on its past strengths. The elements that remain the same are the colour green, the rounded forms, and the letter T, to which new elements are being added such as the icons and new colours. Together, they form the basis of the new message that Transavia aims to communicate: ‘It’s a pleasure.’ Hospitality and service are the key to everything the airline company does: online, at the counter, and in the air. The logo and the icons are designed to be appealing in every language as well as easily understood. In addition, they can be easily and effectively applied in all types of media communications, offline as well as online. And the digital world has become so universal that Transavia.com will simply become Transavia.

But this does not mean that the new house style can now already be admired everywhere. “We’re making these changes in an efficient and cost-effective fashion. For example, our airplanes will be decorated in the new house style only when they are scheduled for repainting,” explains Chief Commercial Officer Roy Scheerder. “Today, 26 January, the first rebranded airplane is taking to the air. A striking element of the new house style is that all our planes will display large icons on the underside, with a different message displayed by each plane. We decided to use icons because they are intercultural. They are appealing and easily understood by people regardless of where they live or what language they speak. I’m also very pleased that, in future, passengers will see the word ‘welcome’ displayed right next to the entrance door, written in all the languages of the countries to which we fly. This is meant to send an individual message to each passenger as part of the high standard of hospitality we aim for.”

Starting next month, customers will already be able to see the first real change on the website. The new international Transavia website will then also go live in the Netherlands and France, and the entire world will be able to see how the online service platform has been further optimized and made more user-friendly for the customer.

Global aviation trends

Transavia sees a great many fast-approaching changes in the airline sector, changes which the organization will have to deal with and which underline the importance of the rebranding operation announced today. Some important trends are:

Global traveller

The world is becoming increasingly globalized, and the number of passenger flights, for leisure as well as business travellers, is therefore rapidly increasing. In addition, business travellers are increasingly opting for economy air travel.

The hybrid consumer

Consumers prefer low prices without loss of quality or else make a well-considered choice for a more expensive premium alternative.

Value for money

Transparent prices result in consumers becoming increasingly knowledgeable and aware of what’s going on. More than ever, customers are focusing on the price/value ratio. In addition, the expectations of consumers are based on the best that the industry has to offer.

Optimum (online) experience

Consumers are increasingly purchasing tickets online and via mobile devices. When doing so, they expect optimum service and hospitality as well as a high degree of user-friendliness.

Fuel prices

In spite of the low price of oil at the moment, fuel will remain an uncertain factor for airline companies in the coming years. Ticket prices are coming under pressure, and this reduces business margins.

A rich history

Transavia is firmly focused on the future, but at the same time the company is also proud of what it has already accomplished.

Transavia was established 50 years ago.
On 16 November 1966, the first commercial flight was carried out.
As a result, Transavia was one of the first companies that made comfortable travel by air available to everyone.
Transavia was one of the first .com airline companies and has been one of the biggest webshops in the Netherlands for years in terms of turnover. Consumers have repeatedly voted Transavia.com as the best site for airplane tickets.
Last year, for the sixth time in a row, Transavia was named by the Dutch travel sector as the best low-cost and the best charter airline company.
Nine out of ten passengers describe flying with Transavia as very pleasant.