US tourists keep flying to South Africa despite diplomatic tensions

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DUDUZILE RAMELA: According to data from Stats SA, 37 300 tourists from the United States visited South Africa in the month of July alone. So beyond the diplomatic noise, there’s actually movement and many of them would have travelled via United Airlines.

So it only makes sense that we speak to Amit Badiani, United Airlines’ head of sales for Africa and offline territories. Thank you very much, Mr Badiani, for joining us this afternoon.

Maybe just start with a brief introduction to United Airlines for our listeners who may not be familiar with you.

AMIT BADIANI: Absolutely. My pleasure, and thank you for having me. At United Airlines, we are very, very proud to be here in the South African market and have been for a number of years, seven years actually later this year.

But most recently, we have just celebrated our five years of flying into Johannesburg from Newark, a New York airport, and we’re really, really excited about where the trajectory of United is going.

What we have seen in the last few years as a corporation is our doubling down on investment in technology, in removing the friction of travel from the customer and making sure we are delivering all the world-class services that we can provide from a product perspective, a customer service perspective, and that’s really been super important to us.

In a post-Covid world, we’ve continued to evaluate opportunities, we’ve continued to grow across the globe, and we’ve continued to add capacity where it makes sense. So we’re really, really excited at United Airlines with what we have going on.

We’re really excited for the future and just happy to be in the South African market, celebrating five years in Johannesburg right now.

DUDUZILE RAMELA: Here’s to another five, 50 years, if you will, and maybe you’re best placed to tell us what characterises demand for air travel on the route.

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AMIT BADIANI: Absolutely. At United Airlines, what we’ve been seeing is a lot of inbound US traffic coming into South Africa, and what this has been able to demonstrate to us is that South Africa really sits at the intersection of business travel and leisure travel.

South Africa has so much to offer.

You can come into Johannesburg, and you’ve got a great business hub here in Africa, you’ve got the safaris, you’ve got the wine country, you’ve got the beauty of Cape Town and Table Mountain and everything else that blends together.

It’s almost become a destination that gives something to everybody. You’ve got the beaches, you’ve got the relaxation, you’ve got the coastline, but you’ve got the cities and the safaris that make it so attractive.

So the inbound traffic from the US has been super positive. It continues to be driving a lot of demand, and we’re really happy to see that.

And of course, the US dollar being quite strong has made it quite inexpensive for customers to come to South Africa and enjoy all the beauty that it has to offer. We’ve been really, really pleased with seeing that demand continue to uptick.

But on the other side, and we’re sitting here in South Africa today and it would be remiss of me to not mention what we do out of here, United Airlines is super important in this market, and we’ve seen our importance grow over the last seven years.

But for us, it’s about targeting those customers here in the South African market and the surrounding countries as well.

That’s really allowed us to provide connectivity to New York, where if you’re flying from here in Johannesburg or you’re flying United Airlines from Cape Town, we have the Washington hub or the Newark hub, and then you can connect on to another 130 or 150 different destinations, depending on the hub you’re transiting through.

That is really opening up the US for South Africans like never before. We’ve seen a huge demand to places like Denver or Chicago, or most recently where we’re seeing Orlando ticking up in terms of favourite hotspots for South Africans to travel to.

DUDUZILE RAMELA: That’s interesting in terms of South Africa-bound customers, where in the country do people go? I hear you mention Joburg and Cape Town, and there’s a healthy bit of rivalry between the two cities in the country, which is the most popular for them?

AMIT BADIANI: Indeed, and I think that’s a healthy rivalry that we all enjoy, because I think it’s great to have. It really is quite diverse in terms of where the population of our customers are coming into.

Of course, Cape Town, as we mentioned, has many of the natural beauties there that people want to come and see and visit and bucket-list items. But I think Johannesburg is also having that pull really from the business centre that it is.

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When I’m in country, I’m spending time in both of those cities and there is a uniqueness about both that allows the customer to be able to start their journey in one city and end it in another.

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Having that ability to have that connectivity that we have, we have a codeshare connectivity agreement with Airlink, which allows customers to fly between the two cities and beyond, to other parts of southern Africa that the customer may want to go to.

I think at United Airlines, we are indifferent as to where the customer starts their journey, and where they want to end their journey. As long as it’s in South Africa, we are super happy.

As the head of Africa, I’m super happy as well. So I think you do see that balancer, the business and the leisure customer do have that choice.

What we have really been able to provide is fantastic aircrafts. We have the 787-9 Dreamliner on the United Airline routes that we have into South Africa. We have our fantastic Polaris business class product with great all access.

This has been a game changer for us on these long-haul routes that people want to sit in and buy into.

DUDUZILE RAMELA: I saw an interesting video yesterday, and this is just a by-and-by, and they were talking about the rise of private, not just lounges, but private arrivals at the airport or private terminals.

So instead of the usual, you get off a plane, you join the queue and all that admin, people are preferring private spaces, and you pay something like $5 000 a year or something like that in the US.

I thought that was quite interesting. I wondered if that’s something that maybe you offer to your customers as well?

AMIT BADIANI: At United Airlines, we operate to seven hubs that we have within the United States, and these seven hubs are fairly large footprints for United Airlines, where sometimes in some locations, some terminals will almost feel like United owns the terminal.

We don’t, of course, but we have such a vast presence that we have our own facilities there. So we have our signature clubs like Polaris Club for our customers sitting in Polaris. We have our United Clubs for non-Polaris customers.

We have a suite of amenities in all of these different terminal locations across the US, and it almost does feel like a private terminal in itself when you see all the United tails lined up outside and the different gates that we have.

But here in South Africa, we have a great operation experience here with our operations in Cape Town and our team here in Johannesburg. Customers have really, really been happy with what we’ve been providing.

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What we do have is a tie-up in some locations, I think it’s being trialled at the moment with some third parties for providing what we call a signature service. But this is not a United product, it’s a third-party product.

But as United, we’re quite proud and happy with the product offering that we do have.

DUDUZILE RAMELA: All right. Very quickly for us, I do wonder what the fuel supply shock has meant for the business. Just taking a look at these stats, 37 000-plus tourists to South Africa in just one month. There’s a lot of air traffic, so what has been the impact on your business?

AMIT BADIANI: We always talk about in the airline industry being ready for the next thing that the world throws at us, whether it’s a geopolitical issue or Covid or anything else.

I think having the mindset from our senior leadership of being nimble and being able to pivot and under-rotate or over-rotate where it’s necessary.

At United Airlines, we’ve always had planning for different eventualities at the forefront of all that we do.

From a fuel crisis perspective, at least in the markets that we operate into or the countries we operate into, we’ve actually been able to secure fuel and been able to do what we need to do in terms of flying quite well.

Our teams and headquarters are constantly reviewing, analysing, supply, looking at different alternatives that may or may not be needed and do a really good job for us.

So, for example, here in South Africa, when there’s been some challenges with the fuel, United Airlines has – and I knock on wood – we’ve always been able to secure the fuel that we need, and we do that in advance and we’ve been able to operate as we had planned.

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So it’s really about being nimble, having a look ahead into what may or may not be coming up on the horizon and spending time at the different desks at headquarters in making sure in this particular example, that fuel is available for us, around the world when we need it, which it always is at United Airlines.

DUDUZILE RAMELA: Thank you so much for your time this afternoon. Amit Badiani is United Airlines’ head of sales for Africa and offline territories.

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