American Airlines on Oct. 10 will reintroduce its "Corporate Experience" package of traveler benefits for contracted corporate customers on American-operated flights globally, the carrier announced in an email sent Wednesday to clients.
Benefits include priority check-in and preferred seats, according to the carrier.
American initially introduced the offering in February 2021 for New Distribution Capability bundles, but the carrier pulled it from the market in April of this year because at the time, the airline "was not clear" whether "we were seeing the benefit from doing it" or that it aligned with the carrier's strategy then, said American SVP of partnerships and retailing Scott Laurence. "Obviously, we've taken a different view now."
Customers have indicated that this is "the most-requested benefit they'd like to see as part of their agreements with American," according to the carrier.
After American in June did an about-face with its NDC strategy, it started to overhaul all sales and distribution processes, Laurence said. Account managers, the sales team, Laurence and CEO Robert Isom "engaged in a listening tour" with corporate clients, and in some cases apologized, but "for the most part it was important to listen," Laurence said.
"The feedback on Corporate Experience was loud and clear," he said. "It was important to travel managers in every conversation we had and was highlighted as a competitive gap. … I heard loud and clear as did our team about priority boarding and to have the [preferred] seats available to our corporate customers."
Corporate Experience traveler benefits include complimentary preferred seats. priority privileges including access to priority check-in, priority security lane access and priority Group 4 boarding—the same as AAdvantage Gold status customers, American said. Also, travelers have access to priority disruption recovery, including higher priority for reaccommodation to a new flight during irregular operations, according to American.
The carrier indicated that some benefits will be processed differently depending on the booking channel used. For NDC bookings, seats can be selected at the time of booking or after ticketing on the American website or app. For bookings through legacy EDIFACT channels, seats can be selected after ticketing on the website or app.
"Priority" will be printed on boarding passes, and no action is needed by the traveler for disruption recovery—maintaining initial seat and cabin selections will happen automatically, according to American.
Corporate Experience now will be available to travelers of all contracted corporate customers, provided the bookings are made in the company's authorized channels and that the unique company identifier, such as a Cart number, is included at the time of booking. "It's triggered as part of the booking process," Laurence said. That includes direct bookings, provided the corporate identifier number is included.
American added it would issue to agencies on Oct. 10 additional ticketing instructions.
"Corporate customers are our best customers, and we need to make sure they have the best experience possible," Laurence said. "We need to make sure we are competitive. In this case we weren't, and now we have something that exceeds what our two network competitors are offering customers. … This is part of what we are doing to ensure not only are we back in the corporate space aggressively, but that we continue to make decisions and bring products to market that ensure we will regain market share and [that we] are the carrier of choice among our corporate customers."
Laurence added that the carrier's "north star is ensuring we are competitive," highlighting the carrier's effort to rebuild trust and earn business. "We have our work cut out for us, but we continue to make really great progress," he said. "This is a step. There will be more."