A web survey conducted by the leading charter provider in Latvia and Estonia SmartLynx Airlines shows that nearly 60 % of all the respondents find that the price of the ticket is most important criteria when selecting a flight. Duration and minimum number of layovers is considered as most important criteria by 27 % of the survey participants. Among survey respondents, 73 % use air travel mainly for personal reasons or for vacationing, 26 % travel mainly for business. 

According to SmartLynx Airlines Public Relations and Marketing manager Ilva Priedniece, the results show that customers value highly direct flights with no layovers that take one conveniently and directly to the destination. „Travelling to a week-long vacation, it is of great importance if the flight will take 4 hours or most of your first and last vacation day,“ added Priedniece. From all the respondents, 23 % prefer a travel package with charter flight and accommodation, and 12 % prefer to buy ticket for charter flight from travel agency and book accommodation separately.

Online-questionnaire shows that up to 46 % of respondents consider helpfulness and ability to find solutions to be the most important attribute of the crew, friendliness is ranked highest by 25 % and professional appearance by 21 %. „Service on board is undoubtedly an integral part of general service quality – it creates an emotion. In addition to pleasant service, clients value highly the flexibility of the crew and capability to find solutions and we put a lot of effort into this. In Autumn, we organised also a customer satisfaction survey that showed that friendliness, level of being informed, helpfulness and appearance of the cabin crew were all ranked at an average of 9,55 points on 10 points scale. This is the best compliment for our work,“ added Priedniece.

When it comes to air travel, Priedniece says that various comfort services have become more important for the client, among these also the possibility to load one’s smartphone or tablet on board. „Need for such service is clearly visible based on our customer satisfaction survey that showed that 82 % of the travellers consider option to load device on board important and would like to use it. Today, SmartLynx Airlines fleet includes one aircraft with USB ports for loading devices on board, but we are seriously considering to increase the number of aircrafts with such possibility,“ explained Priedniece.

Web survey results show that 54 % of responders use catering on board often or approximately half of the times, 31 % order food and drinks seldom. „In air travel there are definitely some challenges when it comes to providing catering service and it is even known that flying influences our taste sensations. Which makes us even more proud to say that recent customer satisfaction survey shows that our clients rank food and drinks on board to be 8,6 points on 10 point scale,“ added Priedniece.

Web survey was carried out in November 2016 among 200 respondents. Approximately 41 % of the respondents have used air travel 1-4 times during past 12 months, 23 % have flown 5-8 times and 26 % 9-12 times. The average age of people who participated in the survey is 30 years.

Customer satisfaction research was carried out in September 2016 among SmartLynx clients. Form with 10 questions was filled out by nearly 1200 travellers.