After four years, Biman Bangladesh Airlines holds its marketing conference tomorrow (Sunday) aiming to carry out a mid-term review of overall sales performance, which was negative in the last six months, officials said.
Biman held the last marketing conference in 2013. This year, the Biman management has identified that most of the stations are behind the sales target, making overall sales performance negative. They will take action against the officials performing poorly, Biman sources said.
The first phase of the marketing conference will be held on January 28-29.
The authority, however, declined to disclose mid-term performance of this fiscal year compared to that of the last fiscal before 28 January. Biman has continued to post profits for the past three years.
Biman has 17 international and seven domestic country and district managers, all of whom will attend the conference along with other marketing people.
Talking to the FE, general manager (public relations) of Biman Shakil Meraj said that after four years, Biman is going to organise the marketing and sales conference.
The stations are plagued with various problems including shortage of manpower and logistics, lack of marketing and promotion tools and vehicles, which the country managers will discuss at the conference.
Besides, they will discuss the issues of flight time rescheduling, increase flight frequency and promotional free baggage allowance for lifting the market share of the national flag carrier. They will also discuss the routes for new Dreamliner aircraft and ways to maximise revenue, said Mr Shakil.
He said Biman was going to add three new stations like Guangzhou, Colombo and Male in its network in 2018. It will come up for discussion what type of aircraft will be suitable for these routes, what will be cargo and passenger load, market segmentation of the passengers and marketing plan will be outlined accordingly.
In this conference, steps will be taken for increasing sales outlets and new sales windows through 24-hour call centre service. The passengers will be able to make complaints and buy tickets from call centres that will help boost revenue, said a marketing official.
Biman is facing stiff competition from some of local airlines operating international flights including Regent and US-Bangla and some budget carriers like Fly Dubai and Air Asia.
Biman has lost many London-bound passengers from Sylhet after Fly Dubai started its operation there. Fly Dubai in collaboration with Emirates now carries passengers to various international destinations from Sylhet, threatening Biman. In this marketing conference, Biman will discuss how to overcome these challenges.
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