Singapore Airlines’ (SIA) will be making several enhancements to its in-flight offerings in efforts to deliver a more personalised experience for customers.
It will be the first airline to allow Premium Economy Class customers to pre-order main courses from its in-flight menu from May 1, 2019. This follows the initial launch to Suites, First Class and Business Class customers on all flights across its network last year, SIA said in a press release on Thursday, March 21.
Under this new initiative, customers may pre-select their meal choices via the SIA website or mobile app anytime from three weeks before travel up to 24 hours before flight departure.
This way, customers get to enjoy a more personalised dining experience, and can be ensured of their preferred meal choice from either the in-flight menu or the ‘Book the Cook’ service.
In another industry first, Singapore Airlines will be enhancing its Child Meal programme to enable parents to pre-order specific meals for their children from three different cuisine categories. They are: Asian, Western and Vegetarian. This will give parents greater visibility and choices over the child meals in advance of travel. Parents can visit the Airline’s website up to 24 hours before the day of travel to view the dishes planned for their flight and select the one that best suits their child’s preferences.
The move comes after an intensive focus group and meal tasting session conducted to gather insights from parents and children to better understand their preferences, SIA said. The initiative will be rollde out to all cabin classes from June 2019 for flights departing Singapore. It will then be extended progressively to flights departing from overseas destinations from August 2019.
Focus group sessions and targeted surveys were also conducted for two of the Airline’s other popular special meals – the Indian Vegetarian Meal and Muslim Meal . Feedback received from these sessions enabled the Airline to improve on these meals by reviewing the ingredients and service ware used. The frequency of menu rotation will also be increased to provide greater variety for customers.
“We see personalisation in in-flight dining offerings as being key to creating an even more memorable travel experience,” said SIA’s Executive Vice President Commercial, Mr Mak Swee Wah. “Apart from focus groups and targeted surveys, we are also leveraging on data analytics to better track meal preferences and customers’ needs.”