By Chinedu Eze
Europe’s mega carrier, British Airways has introduced online business programme for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) known as On-Business and aimed at providing extra travel services at affordable fares for such line of enterprises in order to encourage them to grow.
The airline initiated the programme to enable its corporate clients in growing businesses to book tickets at the most affordable fares. The will then earn travel points at significant discounts and safe a lot of money from their travel expenditure and invariably safe cost in their operations.
BA Commercial Manager, West Africa, Kola Olayinka explained that the programme was aimed ay encouraging SMEs to grow and ensure they continue to patronize the airline that aided them in their growth.
“The whole idea is to look out for people; you know an economy runs on so many things, it runs on people who can employ. So this is British Airways efforts to focus on some of those companies, that we believe are not yet big, but they are big in their own way, and they will be big going forward. And why are we focusing on them? We are focusing on them because if you are running such company, two things will be important to you: cost and revenue. You want the cost to go down and the revenue to go up. In terms of cost, which is where we come in, we can help these businesses manage their travels in such a way that they save money; they earn miles so that they can grow quicker.
And many of them have asked me, what is the catch? I will say there is no catch, but there is one catch, when you eventually grow big, do not forget the airline that helped you to grow. So we are creating the future here, if you like. We are helping the economy and creating the future. Both in travels and in the economy because the person employing 25 staff if the cost is well managed will probably by next year employ 30 or 35 and it continues to grow bigger and bigger and bigger,” he said.
Olayinka explained that BA launched this programme five years ago all over the world, including Nigeria. But British Airways Nigeria decided to re-launch it in order to help growing businesses, adding that the programme is an on-going drive to help small, medium enterprises and others who are employing in that range to make sure they can grow and when they grow they continue to fly British Airways.
Olayinka said in terms of air travel Nigeria continues to be a big attraction in Africa because of its huge population and prospects.
“In Nigeria, no matter what you think is not working and what you think is not perfect, we are a very great nation. There is power in numbers. You know, when you look at the whole Africa, Nigeria remains the powerhouse of Africa. Don’t let us focus on what is yet to work out perfectly; let us focus on what is our strength and in terms of aviation, what is our biggest strength? Numbers. We have people and if we enable these SMEs and all people flying, it means that as an airline we will have growing number of loyal customers”, BA’s Marketing Manager, West Africa said.
On the future of British Airways in Nigeria, Olayinka said the British mega carrier would record its 80th year operating in Nigeria in 2016.
“Next year it will be 80 years that British Airways has been flying to Nigeria. We are going to celebrate it big. We are here for the long haul and what that means is that our projection for this market can only be positive. For example, I will like to see British Airways fly Airbus A380 into Nigeria. My question is, why not; we are already flying it into South Africa, and if South Africa is coming behind us in terms of economic status; why can’t Nigeria be the hub in Africa?”
