A representative media delegation visited Abu Dhabi on the invitation of Etihad Airway during the last week of April. During stay in Abu Dhabi, the members of the delegation were given a comprehensive briefing by Chief Commercial Officer, Peter Baumgartner, at the head office. Welcoming the delegation, Baumgartner claimed that during your next visit, things would look different in Abu Dhabi. For example if you look outside the window, you would find Masdar city and the Masdar Institute of Technology building, research, development clean and renewable energy project that had attracted world attention. The best engineers and companies are participating in what Masdar plans to bring to life. It shows the vision of the leaders of Abu Dhabi beyond oil, he said. It is also a part of the economic diversification of the Abu Dhabi 2030 plan, aviation is a big pillar of that 2030 plan. So we are planning an integral role in Abu Dhabis future project. We are an airline today and we are growing into an aviation group along with all related businesses around aviation group. We are working very closely with Abu Dhabis tourism authority; thats what you expect a national airline to act, he added. He said, We are the fastest growing commercial airline in the worlds aviation history, what we achieved in seven years has taken others much longer. We have done that with style, we have been voted twice in a row as the worlds leading airline at the World Travel Awards next to many other accolades and awards of the industry, he remarked. When you grow with such fast pace, the speed of growth puts the quality under pressure. But still we are considered as the best in the industry. That is a real achievement, the chief commercial Officer said. When you think about our companys mandate, its a multi mandate. First of all, to make an important contribution to Abu Dhabis 2030 master plan. Second, is that we have to be the best airline in the world. We want to move the industry from the accepted standards towards 5star hospitality and we want to be at the forefront and spearhead that transformation, he added. The third mandate is to be commercially successful. We are committed to break-even in 2011; we achieved the breakeven at the Ebitda level in 2010, and thats the first step to full break-even in 2011, he went on to say. The environment has not been the easiest, but tough luck. These are the challenges of managing an airline. We dont suffer from any legacy restrictions. We are an airline that is best suited to challenge the accepted standard. Being young gives us that opportunity, he said. On focusing consumer, Baumgartner said: We are consumer focused airline. We are in the hospitality industry. Customer service is where you judge us. And our customer service segmentation is very wide. We are an airline, premium service airline, high quality standards, but we arent the luxury airline. On apple of the eye, he said: Apple doesnt have customer, apple has fans. So why cant we be the apple of the airline industry. Like apple, our brand positioning allows us to be a quality brand accessible to every section of the consumer segmentation. He said we know how to transform the brand strategy into customer services. Internally, its called 'inspired services. We want to make best use of the opportunity to start from the clean sheet of paper. We have the opportunity to reinvent travelling at every touch point of the entire customer travel experience. About the airways benchmarks, Baumgartner said: Our intention is to challenge the accepted standards in aviation. You expect me to say that my benchmark is Emirates, Singapore, Qatar or Lufthansa. These are all great airlines no doubt. But you might be surprised if I say that none of these are my benchmarks. (We have different benchmarks for different service areas of our business) When we talk about the food/ beverage we are inspired by 5-star hotel/ restaurants and as a logical consequence have require a food/ beverage manager who has experience of a 5-star hotel/ restaurant and therefore can deliver in that fashion in an airline. This is similar to the thinking here at Abu Dhabi when we look at Guggenheim, or Louvre. We see what the world has to offer. But its not as if we want to replicate; we instead want to represent Abu Dhabi culture, its history, values. We incorporate this thinking into developing of Etihad, he said and added We are an airline today with about 8000 staff flying to 66 destinations with close to 60 aircrafts in less than 10 years from now, in 2020, we will have 17-18 thousands employees, have around 150 aircrafts and fly to around 100 destinations. On consumer research, Baumgartner said: We have invested in a lot of consumer research in New York, London, Sydney - no just with frequent flyer but also with not so frequent flyers across the consumer segmentation. The survey found out what consumer like or dont like about flying, their expectation of the future of flying. At least 80 percent of the innovation we will deliver in that future, especially with an aircraft as big as A380 will be directly derived from the consumer research that we did around the world. We are looking forward to 2014 because it is an opportunity to demonstrate our brand strategy of being inspired by what the best the world has to offer and see how that works in an airline environment to demonstrate the strategy to deliver for us. We efficiently connect EU, the US, North America over Abu Dhabi to the east lands, Baumgartner added He said: Etihad is one of the best airlines in terms of consistency of service, customer experience and the airline has proven by awards and accolades it has won. Most credible industry surveys and benchmarks the world cant be wrong in saying that Etihad is one of the top airlines of the world its unprecedented what Etihad has delivered in recent years. Pakistan is an important market for us Pakistan is important in terms of growth opportunities. It is one of the top ten markets in terms of sales, we are committed to Pakistan. On market share, Baumgartner said: Market share is very route specific to ensure connectivity, corporate travel market, we have developed that critical mass to cater. We are getting into a growth pattern where growth will be potential and not linear and its because of the critical mass and the network we now offer to the corporate market the projection moving from 7 million, 25 million by 2020. Talking about sponsorship in sports, Baumgartner said: Well, worlds greatest race track is at door step and it is indeed not just a sports which catch our attention, it also has some strategic sense for us. We have been sponsors of Ferrari team for last three years, we were title sponsors of Abu Dhabi Grand Prix and we were the sponsors of race track. In all that our commercial interest is involve to support all that and we will think for that in future too. That Abu Dhabi Grand Prix give over night fame to Abu Dhabi in front of 200 million TV spectators, he concluded.