Delta Air Lines last month returned to an area it abandoned more than four years ago—negotiating meeting fares—when it relaunched the Delta Meeting Network, a revamped offering that borrows heavily from its merger partner, Northwest Airlines. With Delta returning to the corporate, association and incentive meetings market, the eight largest domestic carriers, with the exception of Southwest Airlines, now offer group discount programs.
Delta unveiled the program last month at the American Society of Association Executives annual meeting in Toronto, and the basic product offer is fairly standard for the industry: one free ticket for every 40 flown, plus discounts off published fares, for meetings of at least 10 attendees traveling from at least two U.S. cities to any of the 376 destinations Delta serves. The product has point-of-sale discounts and zone or region-to-region fares. As an introductory offer, Delta will provide one free ticket for every 20 flown for new contracts signed by Sept. 30.
When Delta overhauled its fare structure with the launch of SimpliFares in January 2005, the carrier dropped its group offering—discontinuing zone fares, meetings discounts and all other programs that were associated with Delta Meeting Network.
In the years following Delta's major fare reform initiative, the carrier gradually undid many key components of SimpliFares. It eliminated fare caps, raised the number of fare categories, upped change fees and returned some Saturday-night stay and minimum stay requirements, leaving the meetings offering as a key missing pre-SimpliFares era component .
"This segment had always been important to Delta, and Delta had been a big player," said Aaron Murray, Delta director of specialty sales. "With the launch of SimpliFares four-and-a-half years ago, the meeting product went away, even though our focus on the industry did not. We heard loud and clear from customers over the years that that was something that they really wanted to see back."
"They were about to resurrect it, then the whole Northwest merger came about, then it was on hold again. It was stop, start, stop, start," said Yvonne Long, senior vice president at group air specialist Air Fulfillment Services. "We were really strong partners with Delta, but no matter how much you want to support an airline, if they don't have a program in place, then it's not going to happen. Our Delta figures dropped dramatically after they abandoned that program."
Though competitors largely matched many of SimpliFares' precepts in 2005, they maintained their meetings programs. "We never left," American Airlines vice president of global sales Frank Morogiello. Long said American, along with United and Continental, were among the beneficiaries of Delta being away for so long. Among the largest U.S. airlines, Southwest remains the lone holdout in offering a formal meetings program, which the carrier eliminated in late 2003. Southwest said it is in no hurry to follow Delta in a return. "We don't have any current plans to bring a meetings program back," a Southwest spokesperson said this month.
Delta's "long-overdue" return should help it regain lost marketshare for meetings business—a segment the carrier led prior to undoing the Delta Meeting Network, Long said. "Like lots of decisions, this one seems to have been made at 35,000 feet, and I know internally within Delta their own people were horrified that it just went away," she said. "Then they just watched the programs drop off, and programs that they had been getting, they just didn't get any more."
In the post-fare-reform era, Northwest maintained its meetings program, which served as the foundation of the next-generation Delta Meeting Network as the two carriers continue integration efforts stemming from last year's merger.
"We created the product based on the Northwest Airlines meeting product, " said Norma Dean, general manager of Delta Meeting Network." The technology platform, which provides online contracting, is the basis of this."
What's new for Delta is the online contracting tool. "With the merger with Northwest," Murray said, "and seeing their slick online contracting tool and focusing on the best of both, this was an opportunity to answer a customer need."
Dean said the online meeting contract request page allows planners to indicate whether they need a single meeting, multiple meeting or event contract. Delta's support area evaluates the requests, then e-mails a contract. Murray said he anticipated a turnaround time of less than five days. "Most often less than that," he clarified, "but five days is our cap."
Those who were using Northwest's meetings program, which has been in place for several years, will find the network has added a lot more destinations and added sales staff support. "We have a dedicated meetings sales support staff that can do ticketing and consulting and synching up one-on-one with customers," Dean said. "What's
old is new, and it's good to have that personalized service for our meeting customer."
Originally published Sept. 21, 2009