Skift Take
There is nothing harder than keeping things simple.
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Throughout the last year Cathay Pacific has been working on a subtle yet significant brand overhaul that has touched everything from its livery to its lounges.
Toby Smith, General Manager, Product, Cathay Pacific, spoke exclusively to Skift about how the iconic airline honors its customers wishes when designing its passenger product, while respecting a well-established brand tradition, and why airport lounges are more important than ever.
Smith tells us that everything about the lasting Cathay brand and product has its foundations in four pillars of brand experience.
“Considered simplicity is one of our four brand design pillars,” he says. “The others are contemporary Asia, heartfelt warmth, and joy of discovery.”
When developing cabin product, Cathay puts feedback from customers at the top of the list, balanced against its product team’s experience, and designs and selects custom components that meet these pillars of brand value and thoroughly testing them.
“It’s a combination of passenger input and our own brand design vision. We test extensively with passengers at several phases throughout the product development cycle. We get people in at a very conceptual stage and ask very basic questions on preferences,” Smith says. “We take it further once we have the seat prototypes in and there will be several rounds of testing with the same group of passengers, to see how their feelings evolve. We test new passengers as well as staff. Our directors and senior management are also heavily involved.”
If the CEO
