What lies behind the appealing offer ‘all you can fly’ from Wizz Air?
Opinion by arsim@thejournalbiz.com
A few years ago, the tourism industry collapsed as the pandemic caused financial woes across the value chain, most notably for airlines.
We may recall the days when all flights were halted and tourism, as we knew it, ceased to exist. Airlines grounded their planes until further notice, which lasted for a whole year.
However, those days are long past us now, as stats indicate that the tourism industry not only rebounded but managed to exceed any expectation from the grim projections circulating those days.
Not only did the airlines get back to the ‘new normal’, but IATA findings suggest that global flight capacities are expected to reach new records this year, with some 40 million flights (up from 38.9 million in 2020) projected to carry over 1 billion people by the end of the year.
Statista on Rebound of International Tourism
Statista Chart
In fact, the recovery of the airline industry was so conclusive that the Hungarian low-cost Wizz Air recently surprised many with a bargain offer, an offer that was impossible to say no to, as 10.000 subscriptions ‘all you can fly’ were sold in a record time, as per Wizz Air announcement.
But what truly lies behind Wizz Air’s appealing promotion?
Is it a marketing stunt, or perhaps once in a life opportunity so good that travelers are finding it hard to ignore?
Before we delve into advantages and disadvantages, we cannot disregard the financial difficulties that Wizz Air has been facing for over a year now, and that alone may be the main reason behind the promotion that turned viral. Wizz is clearly trying to mitigate the ‘financial bleeding’ from their grounded Boings that have dragged the company towards new lows.
Not surprisingly, the stock has been one of the worst performers from the traveling sector this year.
Bloomberg on low cost Airlines reflection on the stock market
Bloomberg chart
But let’s get back to the ‘all you can fly’ offer and elaborate on what truly lies behind the viral promotion.
When it comes to flying, multiple choices of destination are always good news for customers, and the ability to take any flight stretching along 53 countries for the period that covers a whole year for a price of 499$, can easily be considered a traveler’s dream come true.
Having in mind all that, Wizz Air keeps expanding and knowing that the long-distance flights are already included in the price, we may argue that Wizz’s marketing department did a phenomenal job, as there’s hardly any other similar option in the market.
Fortunately enough, the tide is flowing in the right direction for Wizz as current indicators are clearly showing that there’s no stooping of the rise of the traveling industry.
However, these offers are not without their risks and limitations. For instance, the offer has an additional cost for the final booking, or per each flight the subscriber has to pay an additional fee of 10 euros, which means that if we aim for 30 flights throughout the year, then an extra 300 euros must be allocated from our budget.
While the reservation can only be made 72 hours before departure, in other words, if there are no free seats 72 hours before departure, then we shall miss the flight entirely, despite being an ‘all you can fly’ subscriber.
It may seem odd, but hypothetically speaking subscribers may not even book a single flight during the whole year, and this is the main risk that should be taken into account before subscribing to these offers.
Wizz offer that quickly turned viral
Wizz ‘all you can fly’ promotion
In conclusion, it is worth noting that the advantages are greater than the disadvantages because the offer has a very favorable price and includes many destinations.
Personally, or for any of the ten thousand subscribers concerned, what remains on our ‘to do’ list is to diligently plan the next destination, and if we have a flexible schedule, or perhaps our work involves frequent trips, then we can easily argue that we already are in a ‘win-win’ situation.
Indeed, there are risks we may face along the way, but there’s no significant improvement in life without taking any risk at all.
Thus, we must move out of our comfort zone, so we can explore different cultures, travel and meet new people, and most importantly work as we travel, that alone is considered to be the only positive thing that happened during pandemics, the very birth of ‘remote work’.
And as the trend keeps expanding globally, we can argue that we have a new diverse workforce slowly rising in the market, a perfect mixture of professionals and semi-professionals who prefer to travel and work ‘on the go’, and this type of work is otherwise known as ‘ digital nomads’.
The phenomenon that appeared during the pandemic is slowly turning into a global trend, and this may sum up everything that I’ve elaborated on thus far, the importance of remote work and the benefits of the ‘low cost’ traveling around the globe.
