How to Make Seats Stand Out
It’s a rare airline with a modern business class suite these days that doesn’t offer some form of business-plus seat in the front row of its cabins. From United’s Polaris Studio to American’s Flagship Suite Preferred, jetBlue’s Mint Studio to Condor Prime and Starlux’s first class, it’s clear that airlines see an opportunity to segment the business class passengers that make up a huge part of their revenue and profitability.
As airlines, designers and manufacturers pace out the boundaries of what these seats look like, feel like and offer to passengers, though, there are many differences in the onboard experience.
Key to standing out from the market, and to differentiating the product — both from the rest of the business class cabin and from competitor airlines — is a mix of hard and soft product that both looks and feels like something for which customers want to spend up.
And spend up they must: prices vary depending on route, but long-haul upgrades to business-plus range around $300–400 for the most part. Most airlines want cold, hard, cash (well, cold, hard credit card details) rather than miles or points, on top of the existing business class fare, usually as an ancillary akin to a seat selection fee.
That’s one way to stand out immediately for airlines: enable more ways to pay, which will be especially important for the road warrior market. Discussing the topic at the Paris Air Show this month, there was wry agreement that it will be a rare corporate ticketing policy that gives business travellers the green light to spend several hundred dollars for the front row on top of what should be a spacious and private business class suite.
Miles and points are a clear benefit here, with surprisingly few airlines allowing points payments for the seat. For miles-rich, travel policy-constrained frequent flyers, this is a great way to build loyalty and provide relatively low-expenditure points redemptions, especially if “precious metal” cardholders can burn miles at a reduced rate. A smart airline might even offer an as-available upgrade voucher for the product to their most frequent flyers, both to get them hooked on business-plus and to incentivise further loyalty beyond the top tier: earn one voucher per X thousand tier or status points earned after maxing out at the top level, for example. This upgrade voucher could also be an option for the increasingly lucrative co-branded credit card market.
But what about the seat itself? Some stand out from the rest of the cabin with clear upgrades to the colour, materials and finish (CMF) of the seat, like Starlux and American. Some, like Lufthansa and Virgin Atlantic, don’t change the CMF, with the upgrade instead being about space and features (like Virgin’s bigger footwell and partner dining option) or adding hard product like doors and higher walls to boost privacy (like Lufthansa’s Allegris Business Suite). There’s clearly a balance between upgrades to CMF and privacy on the one hand and the desire to keep part count and maintenance cost under control on the other. The sweet spot here would seem to be to focus on upgrading the uniquely front row element (the footwell and monument) while keeping the hard product of the seat element itself as similar to rows 2 and back as possible.
Between the world of hard product and soft product lies the seat cover, and here there is much room for innovation. As a high-impact, high-visibility, easily replaceable element to the seat, but with limited impact on part count, a business-plus seat cover with additional panache — either through appearance alone or extra comfort elements — can be a real plus.
Soft product can create massive wow factor: even something as simple as a signature pillow has been used to great effect in premium classes. Think Etihad’s bright diamond-patterned pillow that somehow managed to end up in so many first-class flyers’ homes. So might an extra comfortable throw blanket to add tactility and luxury, while United goes even further to add upgraded larger amenities, hoodie-pyjamas, and even branded playing cards.