By Yevgeny Trofimchik
According to Igor Cherginets, Belavia’s Deputy Director General for Marketing and Foreign Trade, the national airline is considering introducing duty free sales on board aircraft. “We’re working on the creation of such a service, but it’s rather complex,” he notes.
Belavia is working on a hybrid booking system, combining classical principles and low-costs. Mr. Cherginets underlines that the latter rely on making revenue from duty free sales of perfume, alcohol and souvenirs. “The more we earn on non-ticket sales, the lower our tariffs can be,” he explains.
Mr. Cherginets tells us that Belavia is soon to complete modernisation of its revenue management system. “The airline has made good progress in working out a flexible tariff policy, using elements of a low-budget system,” notes Mr. Cherginets. Belavia has joined an American company in creating a hybrid system of tariffs. “We’ve been managing this manually but additional software will be installed by February, managing the new tariffs automatically,” he stresses.
He feels confident that passengers will enjoy these novelties. “No doubt, it will increase traffic, with the programme supervising the process automatically,” Mr. Cherginets asserts. He believes that it’s too early to talk about a low-cost airline for the country. “It’s not because we lack knowledge or expertise. We could launch it tomorrow but conditions are not yet ripe,” he explains. He notes that Belavia hopes to move in this direction gradually.
