EasyJet's General Manager for Spain and Portugal at ESADE: 'Over the next five years, we expect to see growth of 7% a year'

‘Over the next five years, we expect to see growth of 7% a year’, explained Javier Gándara, General Manager for Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands at easyJet, speaking at ESADECREAPOLIS’s International Centre for Tourism Innovation (AIIT). According to the executive, ‘There is still potential to generate new business’, but ‘for now the company is considering long-distance flights’.

‘Despite what you might think, our competitors are companies like TAP and British Airways, not Vueling and Ryanair, because we are very big in Europe. We are the largest carrier in the UK, and we have been flying to and from major airports for a long time. Really, the competition is at each airport.’

Aeronautical e-commerce

‘At EasyJet, we don’t see ourselves as an airline, but rather as an e-commerce company that flies planes’, he said. ‘We have an annual turnover of €6 billion, and our website is the third most searched in terms of annual visits of any airline in the world’, he continued. He added, ‘We essentially use a dynamic pricing model, because ideally you want to have an occupancy rate of at least 90%.’ In this regard, the executive explained that the company is ‘a start-up that’s more than twenty years old’ and that it ‘retains the culture of innovation’. Proof of this can be seen in its annual ‘Innovation Day’.

To date, Gándara explained, EasyJet has used ‘traditional programming’. For the past five years,  it has also been using ‘artificial intelligence’ in this context. In fact, he noted, the company recently hired a Spaniard as its first Head of Data Science.

Profits

To maximise profits, Gándara explained, the company focuses on four key aspects: high asset utilisation, such as flying planes for 11-12 hours a day, beginning as early as is commercially viable and extending the day for as long as possible, taking safety issues into account; a high occupancy rate; and the unbundling of services (‘from all-inclusive to all-exclusive’). Moreover, EasyJet has turned the direct sales model that has traditionally been used by low-cost airlines into a hybrid model and, since 2008, has had an agreement with Amadeus and other major sites.

‘We focus on innovation, and our obsession lies in making flying easier and more affordable’, he explained. ‘The pure low-cost model enabled low prices, but we have always felt we could reach more passengers by complicating the low-cost model, which is what we have done’, he said.

‘Every reservation is a sale: part of our model is based on the fact that reservations are non-refundable and almost all our services must be paid for by credit card, affording us enviable liquidity. ‘EasyJet’s low-cost model has been profitable throughout its years of existence.’