COMMENT: PR game is too easy for airline boss
Irish low-cost airline Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary pulled off another PR coup last week when, in an interview with the BBC, he floated the idea of charging passengers £1 (just over $2) to use the toilet.
Cue lots of righteous indignation from travel industry commentators, with Which? Holiday head of research Rochelle Turner thundering: “It seems Ryanair is prepared to plumb any depth to make a fast buck and, once again, is putting profit before the comfort of its customers. Charging people to go to the toilet might result in fewer people buying overpriced drinks on board, though – that would serve Ryanair right.”
Sadly, her hopes are likely to be dashed, for one simple reason – it’ll probably never happen.
As Ryanair spokesman Stephen McNamara himself said:
“Michael makes a lot of this stuff up as he goes along and, while this has been discussed internally, there are no immediate plans to introduce it.”
McNamara’s next sentence, meanwhile, gives an insight into O’Leary’s true motivation: “This highlights Ryanair’s continuing obsession with lowering costs and passing these savings on in the form of lower fares.”
The airline has taken unprecedented steps to keep headline fares low, charging extra for items such as additional luggage and, recently, O’Leary told the UK’s Daily Telegraph he wanted to remove all check-in desks by the end of the year in a further bid to cut costs.
And every time he does it, it generates extra column inches for his central message: “We’re all about finding ways of raising discretionary revenue so we can keep lowering the cost of air travel.”
Meanwhile, the best rival Easyjet’s spokesman can do is respond with a lame joke – “inflation appears to have gone crazy if it now costs £1 to spend a penny” – a line O’Leary had already used in his original interview.
Sometimes, he must think it’s too easy.
Many good puns could come of this sort of PR, but I’d suggest most that could turn their hand to it, couldn’t give….
Would you see Ryanair doubling the number of toilets on planes, and then feeding their passengers fig biscuits, and other loosening pleasantries?
All of a sudden, Ryanair’s making an extra 2 quid per passenger per flight. I guess the only thing would be trade off in cleaning/pumping costs.
Now, do airplanes really dump their waste in the air or was that simply banter from years gone by.
More silliness abounds.
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Australia needs a hate figure like this – somone who’s happy to be a dick if it means everyone sees it as his brand versus the world.
Sol? Sol!?!
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