One-On-One With Duncan Bureau: WestJet Grows Corporate Business, Canadian Marketshare

WestJet Airlines director of sales and business development Duncan Bureau recently spoke with Business Travel News senior editor Jay Boehmer to discuss the Canadian carrier's growth and approach to the corporate market.

Business Travel News: Is business travel on WestJet increasing?

Duncan Bureau: We have seen significant growth in the number of contracted relationships in place over the last 18 months. Before that, we didn't have any contracts. We now have well over 800 corporate contracted businesses. We've structured agreements that are growth-based. They're not punitive and certainly can drive a lot of cost out of most corporations' travel budgets.

BTN: What drove that growth?

Bureau: We had consistently heard from corporate Canada that we had old, tired airplanes, we didn't have the frequency and we didn't have the legroom. Over the last 18 months, we've been removing those objections. Things like brand-new jets, leather seats, LiveTV and a significant increase in frequency and key business market deployments have made us viable in corporate Canada. We're able to satisfy the needs of very large corporations and be their primary carrier here, Wal-Mart being a great example.

We certainly have no problem getting into any corporate account in Canada. We, in most cases, get invited, either through our travel agency partner or the corporate direct. They really are looking for an alternative in the marketplace.

BTN: Some buyers have complained about Air Canada's distribution policies. What's your approach?

Bureau: We are focused on getting our product on as many shelves as possible and enabling customers to be able to book with us how they want. That means building a Biz WebLink tool for those in an unmanaged environment. If you want to book directly, we've solved that. For those with a travel management policy, we have strong relationships with TMCs. Our overall business from the travel agency group is close to 40 percent. That's up from about 18 percent three years ago.

BTN: You've been in growth mode for a while. What's the pace to come?

Bureau: We've focused on fortifying key business markets in Canada. We have a variable fleet strategy. We point a lot of metal south in the winter and we repatriate the asset and point it across Canada for the summer. From a business perspective, we started to schedule aircraft on a commercial basis, rather than a flow basis. Historically, we would have had not particularly great business times on Toronto-Montreal, Toronto-Ottawa, Toronto-Halifax. Our scheduling guys are doing a phenomenal job at building a commercial schedule that addresses the needs of the business traveler.

BTN: The last target I saw was 50 percent marketshare in Canada.

Bureau: We're hovering around 38 percent. We've seen from 3 percent to 4 percent growth in marketshare in the last few years, and we see no reason for that to change. We expect to be the dominant domestic carrier from a marketshare perspective in Canada by 2011.

BTN: Do you see further penetration into the United States?

Bureau: We have been successful in leisure markets, and we see opportunity in eastern Canada and in transborder business markets. Once we strengthen our point of sale in the United States, we're a viable option.

BTN: What about beyond North America?

Bureau: We're focused on what our series of aircraft are capable of, and that's certainly North America, including the Caribbean, Mexico and Hawaii. There's a tremendous opportunity to be capitalized on. We have orders that will take us up to 111 aircraft. Once we're at that point, who knows? Would we like to fly higher and wider-body aircraft and farther? Sure. Do we have any plans for that today? No.

BTN: What about filling those gaps with codeshares or global alliance partners?

Bureau: There are a number of carriers that really make sense. There's a great opportunity to create a gateway strategy and align ourselves with some key carriers, inbound into Canada, where we could provide a domestic network. We could satisfy the corporate Canada objection, which is, "You can't get me to Frankfurt, you can't get me to Hong Kong." If we align ourselves strategically with key partners on a gateway basis, there's some opportunity to increase our network virtually through partner airlines.