While AI is ingrained in company’s tech infrastructure, it won’t replace human-to-human interaction
The global luxury travel market is seeing plenty of growth just like the rest of the travel industry. Valued at USD 1.38 trillion last year, the industry has not only bounced back to pre-pandemic levels but is also projected to grow at a robust CAGR of 7.9% from 2024 to 2030.
This growth is accompanied by a shift in what luxury travellers seek. A recent survey revealed that 68% of luxury travel advisors observed a trend towards highly personalised experiences: longer vacations, enhanced privacy, and premium amenities. In essence, luxury travellers now desire journeys that are as exclusive and luxurious as their destinations.
VistaJet has picked up on the increased demand as well as shifts in behaviour for this demographic, and is currently expanding in a number of markets to capitalise on these ballooning trends.
Founded in 2004, VistaJet runs a fleet of private aircrafts to 207 countries and territories, covering 96% of the world. Its subscription model offers customers access to the fleet while only paying for the hours they fly via The VistaJet Program membership, which includes mid and long-range jets.
We caught up with VistaJet’s Crystal Wong, Executive Vice President, Program Sales, APAC and Amy Yang, Vice President, Marketing, APAC & IMEA, to chat about how the company is adapting to changes in the regional market, trends and demand in the business jet sector, the significance of the Southeast Asian market and VistaJet’s adoption of Artificial Intelligence.
Q: Could you name some changes in the business jet market that have directly influenced customer behaviour within your target demographic?
Crystal: There are changes constantly, no matter in Asia or internationally, so we always encounter substantial growth potential. It’s probably easier for us to go back a few years to compare ‘during Covid’ and then the post-Covid period, because that caused a significant change in the demand and market trends.
Firstly, we have seen more and more aircraft owners either selling their aircraft, flying less on their own aircrafts, or starting to switch to our subscription model. We’re becoming an alternative to aircraft ownership.
Another significant feature that we can see is for the corporations flying. We’ve welcomed more and more corporation members, and they enjoy our program because our program gives them significant business advantages; it’s about business value for international cooperations. They can enjoy consistent service from us, and they don’t need to pay the ownership costs, asset costs or any asset fees that will go into their balance sheet. Those are some of the trends that we can see or demand that we can see in the business jet market.
Amy: I have a couple of things to add to Crystal’s points – compared to before Covid, a lot of people have health and safety concerns now. Just to put this into perspective, research shows that flying commercially on an airline has 700 touch-points for passengers for each trip. But if you fly private, the touch points drop to as few as 20. These touch points start from the time you leave your house, get into a car and then go to the airport, so on.
That’s one reason why we see the trend shifting to our business. And another thing that I want to expand on is flying private on business tours. Just two weeks ago, I was flying on our aircraft, and we visited three countries and four cities in three days in Africa. That is something that you won’t be able to do on a commercial airline. And a lot of these locations don’t have direct connections, so this is only possible when you fly private. That’s another notable trend.
Q: VistaJet has also expanded in the Asia-Pacific region because of increased demand. What is the significance of this region, especially Southeast Asia?
Crystal: It’s a very important market to us, for sure. We have been in Southeast Asia for 15 years, while our company is celebrating turning 20-years-old. This is one of our most important markets for sure.
To give you some context, in terms of numbers, for the whole of APAC, our total flight hours growth year-over-year in 2023 was 54% and for flights legs, we had 73% year-over-year growth. We’re very proud and if you just want to look at the Southeast Asia market, excluding the North Asian market, our total flight hours growth year-over-year in 2023 was 23% and then for flight numbers, we had 22% growth, also amazing numbers there for our strong presence in Southeast Asia.
We also opened our Singapore office last year. In addition to our Hong Kong office, which has been in the region for years, we opened our Singapore office to support some of the regional needs or regional business development activities needed in Southeast Asia. Whenever we have customers in Singapore or in Southeast Asia, or in Malaysia, we can use our existing fleet to serve them. Our aircrafts are also constantly in Asia and Southeast Asia to accommodate the demand anytime. For example, our Challenger aircraft is also part of our expansion plan in Southeast Asia – Challenger 605 and Challenger 350 are within the region, connecting Singapore, Malaysia, and so on.
One of the aircraft types that I would like to mention is very popular with our Southeast Asia market customers is the Global 7500. So, I think when people hear about it, they know it’s a game changer for ultra long range travel. It will connect Southeast Asia countries like Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia to the rest of the world. So, if our customers have big families, they want to fly from Southeast Asia to Europe, North America, then the Global 7500 will be one of the best choices.
Crystal Wong, Executive Vice President, Program Sales, APAC, VistaJet
Q: They say innovation has to be constant to tackle these big shifts in the market, especially in this new landscape…
Crystal:I’d like to categorize innovation into two big categories, which are business and service.
We’re the first company to not charge one of the most significant costs in the private jet market, which is called the ferry cost or repositioning cost. And we don’t just do it within one region, like we don’t just do it within Europe, which is a more mature private jet market, but we also do it here in Asia.
We also do not charge ferry costs in Southeast Asia when it comes to our program membership because when we started our business model, we wanted to go for a ‘no home base’ model. That means we are not like most private aviation companies out there whose business model is that their aircraft always needs to go back to their home base no matter where the flight has finished. We operate a floating fleet model. This is something that nobody did back then.
To name a few, we have VistaPet. We have Adventures in the Sky. We have Wine in the Sky. If they are taking their pets, if they are taking their children, or if they are having a business meeting with their business partners, we can accommodate that. And again, we have all these services in 96% of the world. So, not just regionally or just out of London, Hong Kong, Singapore… but we do this worldwide.
Amy: Speaking of innovation, we have developed our wellness programs on top of our service innovation program. The program was tailored to what the customer needs, no matter if it is pets, children or the client themselves. When they’re flying, we have a ‘pre-fly’ nutritionist to help design the menu for them. We also work with our ambassadors to get tips on how to craft healthy and nutritious menus for them and then in-flight, you have all the service programs provided on-board and at the destination. We continue to innovate programs like this to create a better travel experience for our clients.
Q: How significantly has revenue been impacted by these shifting market trends?
Crystal: Our program membership is our main product, the main way to to fly with us, and I would say, a guaranteed way to fly with VistaJet because the membership offers availability to our fleets for our customers, no matter where they are worldwide.
This program membership is very important to us, and at the same time, very popular among our program members and in the market – in 2023 it experienced double digit growth of 14% and we are very confident this double digit growth will be achieved again with the shifting market trends. We’re confident in our infrastructure and connectivity, like in Africa, which is our new focus and one of the markets that we’ve seen strong growth in. I would say that puts us in a very good position to experience another double digit growth in 2024.
Amy Yang, Vice President, Marketing, APAC & IMEA, VistaJet
Q: We can’t have a conversation in 2024 without getting into AI so I’d like to know how VistaJet is adopting and incorporating new technology, like Gen AI, into its workflow and processes?
Crystal: As you might imagine, to manage and to operate over 300 aircraft, to book flights on over 300 aircraft, to make each flight perform efficiently and not waste unnecessary resources, it’s not easy if we just do it by depending on human beings 100%. VistaJet had already developed its own flight system a long time ago, and we definitely needed AI support here.
We definitely invest in our technology when we develop these workflow processes. But one thing I would like to emphasise, even though the question is about AI, every flight in VistaJet is different to us because it’s also different to our customers, and we would like it to be as personalised as possible. So even though technology, like AI, will definitely help us streamline the process to make the customers’ flight more efficient, we still need that human-to-human interaction.
We don’t believe AI can fully replace the human-to-human interaction that we have here at VistaJet. We are not giving up any human interaction just to be replaced 100% by AI. But, we will require AI support when it comes to our VistaJet app, our charter platform or public jet network app. In addition to the app, we believe human-to-human interaction is still very important when it comes to personalising the service and the flights.
Q: With so much change in the luxury travel market, what is VistaJet’s outlook for the future of this segment and how has its vision for the future of luxury travel changed, if at all?
Crystal: VistaJet’s vision has always been very consistent and clear. One of the primary visions that we’ve always had is making flying private simple. Everything we do is built around this vision of ‘flying private made simple’. We operate floating fleets, and our subscription program members only pay the hours that they fly. All these business models that we do are trying to make flying in our jets as simple as seamless as possible.
