Delta Air Lines last month returned to an area it abandoned more than four years ago—negotiating meeting fare discounts—when it launched the Delta Meeting Network, which it unveiled at the American Society of Association Executives annual meeting in Toronto.
"Our sales team debuted the product at ASAE and got several contracts from the trade show," said Norma Dean, general manager of Delta Meeting Network. "Those will be the first that we implement for the Delta Meeting Network branded product. We created the product based on the Northwest Airlines meeting product. The technology platform, which provides online contracting, is the basis of this."
Dean said the online meeting contract request page allows buyers to indicate whether they need a single meeting, multiple meeting or event contract. Delta's support area evaluates the requests and e-mails back to them a contract. Aaron Murray, Delta director of specialty sales, said he anticipates a turnaround time of less than five days. "Most often less than that," he clarified, "but five days is our cap."
The airline only now is returning to a product designed to attract corporate, association and incentive meeting travel. For the decade leading up to the launch of SimpliFares in January 2005, Delta was one of the industry leaders when it came to negotiating meeting fares.
"This segment had always been important to Delta, and Delta had been a big player," Murray said. "With the launch of SimpliFares four-and-a-half years ago, the meeting product went away, even though our focus on the industry did not. We heard loud and clear from customers over the years that it was something they really wanted to see back."
Though the carrier's relaunch of the Delta Meeting Network came two years after the death of SimpliFares
(BTNonline, Sept. 24, 2007), its "long-overdue" return to the meetings market should help the carrier to regain lost marketshare for meetings business, said Yvonne Long, senior vice president at group air specialist Air Fulfillment Services.
"They were about to resurrect it, then the whole Northwest merger came about, then it was on hold again. It was stop, start, stop, start," Long said. "We were really strong partners with Delta, but no matter how much you want to support an airline, if they don't have a program in place, then it's not going to happen. We watched our Delta figures drop dramatically after they abandoned that program."
The basic product offer is fairly standard for the industry: one free ticket for every 40 flown, plus discounts off published fares, for meetings of at least 10 attendees traveling from at least two U.S. cities to any of the 376 destinations Delta serves. The product has point-of-sale discounts and zone or region-to-region fares. As an introductory offer, Delta will provide one free ticket for every 20 flown for new contracts signed by Sept. 30. "If I was in Delta's shoes I'd keep that in pace for about a year to really regain the volume that they lost," Long said.
What's new for Delta is the online contracting tool.
"With the merger with Northwest," Murray said, "and seeing their slick online contracting tool and focusing on the best of both, this was just one of those opportunities to answer a customer need."
Those who were using Northwest's meetings program, which has been in place for several years, will find the network has added a lot more destinations and added sales staff support.
"We have a dedicated meetings sales support staff that can do ticketing and consulting and synching up one-on-one with customers," Dean said. "What's old is new, and it's good to have that personalized service for our meeting customer."
Senior editor Jay Boehmer contributed to this report.