Vistara looks beyond pricing strategy to build its brand

Airline pitches comfort, mood lighting with its new aircraft; betting on premium customer experience

In a highly commoditised market, Vistara is looking to differentiate its brand and establish its premium positioning by focusing on in-flight experience. With a new fleet that offers more comfortable seats and promises fliers a more pleasurable experience, it hopes to move away from the price and discount led differentiation policy that all Indian airline brands have been forced to adopt in recent years. 

However, the challenge will be breaking through the customer mindset and delivering an experience that lives up to the brand promise.

One of the big steps towards creating a premium brand, Vistara says, has been the launch of its new aircraft. On Thursday, VT-TNB, the airline’s first A320 Neo landed at Delhi airport from the Airbus factory in Toulouse. The aircraft and the in-flight experience are very different from the other narrow bodies that competitors fly-mood lighting, music and more leg room, the airline says will mark the brand out from the rest.

“The mood lighting is going to be a huge differentiator, there will be a different set of colour depending on the phase of flight to create a pleasing and differential ambience,” Sanjiv Kapoor, Vistara’s chief commercial officer told Business Standard in an interview last week. This is a first for the Indian skies he says and a significant shift away from the no-frills, crammed and hurried journeys that most flights have now become. 

The problem with the Indian market, in recent years, has been that the customer’s desire to grab the best deals has led every airline to fight the price war. Be it low cost carriers (LCC) or premium airlines, travellers end up choosing their brands according to the prices on offer. This makes it difficult for an airline to create a separate brand identity, build loyalty and improve its margins. 

Globally too airlines have grappled with a similar issue and one solution has been to focus on in-flight experience. Commercial airlines have been experimenting with different aspects of lighting inside the cabin to provide a soothing effect on passengers mainly for long haul flights. For instance, Virgin America uses pink and purple lights with different intensities at various stages of the journey. The idea stems from the concept that different shades at different times of the day increases the emotional quotient of a flyer. 

For its cabin, a Vistara team spent two days at a workshop in the Airbus factory at Toulouse to finalise a wide range of colours from light purple to sunset orange and a variety of hues in between which will be changed during different stages of the flight like boarding, take-off, meal time, landing and for sleep mode on overnight flights. “Colours are a combination of several factors, based on time of day and phase of flight, we will not go the extent of nightclub-like experience Virgin America creates which I personally like, it will be slightly more restrained yet will create a differentiated, hip-look and feel inside the aircraft,” Kapoor says.

Beside that the airline has refurbished its seating with softer seat cushions, softer seat leather, wider seat back, four-way adjustable headrest and a new genre of in-flight music. Ajay Awtaney, aviation blogger who was one of the first to take a look at the aircraft says, “Seat colours and design, gets better now, earlier, the headrests would jut out of the seat, now they are integrated in the seat in a seamless fashion, there is more padding in the seats now, and there is more space as well.”

For in-flight music, Vistara will have blues, jazz and soft rock instrumentals as boarding and landing music. Kapoor feels that together with mood lighting it will create an upscale clubby atmosphere inside the aircraft. “This will appeal to the global citizens and world travellers of today and to the corporate of a certain vintage,” he says obviously referring to Vistara’s ambition of being in the long haul international service.

Since 2014, when Tata Sons joined hands with Singapore Airlines to create Vistara, the airline’s focus has been to fill the gap of a premium brand in Indian aviation market. The airline’s management has constantly tried to differentiate itself’ from other airlines or as the airline says to give a ‘new feeling’ to old fliers. 

The airline has based its customer-focused premium thrust on a market study. The study indicated that there is a section of fliers that would be willing to pay more if they saw tangible value in the transaction. If the aircraft delivers on extra leg space, for instance, or as Vistara claims, a Starbucks on board, or a lounge facility at the airport; it could find more customers even at a higher price. 

CEO Phee Teik Yeoh says that his aim for Vistara is to go beyond providing mere transportation and to create memorable flying experiences. “For today’s discerning air travellers, it is imperative to offer an in-flight experience that pleases all senses. The interior changes in our first A320 Neo are a manifestation of this thought,” he says.