Alaska Airlines has iundergone several changes the past few years, including its acquisition of Hawaiian Airlines and the launch of international destinations from Seattle. In September Alaska and American Airlines announced plans to seek Alaska's inclusion in American's antitrust-immune transatlantic and transpacific joint ventures, which would expand options for the Seattle-based carrier.
In recent earnings calls, executives have noted that corporate revenue increased each of the past two quarters by 30 percent year over year.
That means ”that they're attracting more corporate travelers, and they're going to be in the conversation more," GoldSpring Consulting partner Neil Hammond said.
The airline this year particularly improved in "networks, partnerships and frequencies," where it gained 0.16 points to 3.45.
"As we've looked at the network, the biggest thing has been international long-haul flying," Alaska managing director of U.S. and global strategic sales Jonathan Northard said. "We're able to now go after corporate accounts and customers that previously we really didn't have access to. We now are relevant with Seattle-London. That's the No. 1 business market out of Seattle. When you look at Tokyo and Seoul, those are also top-five corporate markets out of the Seattle area. That's been a big focus."
Domestically, "Seattle, Portland, Ore., and San Diego, really are showing tremendous returns of business travel," Northard said. "There's a lot of tech traffic that goes up and down the West Coast, and we've put a lot of eggs in that basket."
"Sometimes the corporate buyers and managed programs are going to take some time to realize that they're growing," Hammond said.
Two categories where Alaska dropped were "flexibility in meeting pricing and contract negotiation," down 0.19 points, and "flexibility in negotiating services and amenities," down 0.17 points.
"One of the biggest things we're doing with the team is trying to improve all the announcements that we've had, our collateral and our marketing and engagements with the corporate market," Northard said. "We're adding products that we know corporate travelers like and want to have and have been asking us for years to have."
Some of those investments include the Aurora lie-flat suites on long-haul flights on the Boeing 737 Max 10 aircraft, scheduled to be delivered in 2028, the Premium Reserve cabin being added and new lounges.
With all the changes, Alaska also has had to retrain its sales team. "We've historically been an airline that has focused on selling $200 tickets up and down the West Coast," Northard said. "The trainings now are, how do we win the $10,000 sales in international long-haul markets? How do we sell more premium, and how do we position ourselves in the market … and make sure that the accounts that we serve feel that there's value in the relationship that we have?"
The carrier also now is growing the team on the agency side, "so we can get our product distributed on their channels and showing all of our products, not just Main and First like we show today," Northard said, explaining that Alaska does not sell certain seats, such as Main Preferred, in third-party channels.
"Obviously, NDC is a big unlock there, but our strategy on that front is going to be we don't want to force anybody to do anything," he said.
In the past year, the carrier also introduced Atmos for Business for small and midsize enterprises, and Alaska is seeing "incredible growth" for the program. Another area of investment is data reporting—where it earned its lowest rating— and servicing features for contracted corporates.
"It's table stakes in our industry to have that kind of portal that [customers] can go and see how their contract fulfillment is doing," Northard said. "We want people to understand where we fly, what we offer and then be excited about the future vision."