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 Travel & Outdoors | October 2006 
Alaska Airlines Now Habla Espanol
 John Gillie - News Tribune
| | For Alaska Airlines, Mexico isn't just a going-to-the-beach market anymore. |
The Seattle-based carrier's business, while still heavily tilted toward flying Americans on vacation to Mexico's traditional beach resorts such as Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, Cabo San Lucas and Cancun, in the last two years has begun serving such Mexican business centers as Guadalajara and Mexico City.
And as the Hispanic population within the U.S. has grown, so has the proportion of Spanish-speaking travelers using Alaska to travel to visit friends and family in the 10 Mexican destinations Alaska now serves.
And even between domestic destinations, Alaska and its regional sister airline, Horizon, have seen a healthy increase in Spanish-speaking travelers.
As that business boomed, both airlines found they were ill-equipped to serve the Spanish-language traveler. Their Web pages, in-flight magazine and promotional literature were English-only. And finding Spanish-speaking personnel assigned to their flights and customer service facilities was something of a hit-or-miss proposition.
"We listen to our customers closely, and they were telling us they needed more Spanish-language options and services," said Steve Jarvis, Alaska's vice president of marketing and customer experience. Thus the airline embarked on a major effort to better serve Spanish-speaking customers.
One of the first fruits of that effort is a Spanish-language version of the airlines' Web pages, which debuted this month.
Jarvis talked with The News Tribune about that project.
How long did it take to convert your Web pages to Spanish?
We got it up and running in about 90 days. We spent a lot of time with some of our own Spanish-speaking employees reviewing the work of our outside consultant to see that it was done right. The Web page is just part of a big effort to make our airlines more accessible to Spanish-speaking customers.
How many pages had to be translated?
About 3,000.
Why did you decide to embark on this project?
We've had an employee committee that has been working on how we could be more customer friendly for our Spanish-speaking customers for quite awhile. One thing that prompted us to move ahead with the translation was our experience with Spanish-language online advertising. We found that a large number of viewers clicked through those advertisements to go to our Web site, but abandoned their search when they discovered the site was English-only.
Are all parts of your Web site now in Spanish?
Most of it. But there are some parts of it that are provided by third parties that aren't available in Spanish. Our investor relations information, for instance, is provided by an outside vendor. Our hotel and car rental information is provided by an outside source -- Expedia -- that doesn't yet offer Spanish Web pages.
Why is it important that your Web pages are available in Spanish?
Because Alaska and Horizon pride themselves on being able to respond to customer wants, and we've been hearing from our customers for some time now that having our Web pages in Spanish would be a great service to them.
With the growing Spanish-speaking population in the United States, it's important to our business that we serve that part of our population. About 40 percent of our revenue is generated through our Web pages, so it's a significant piece of business.
Beyond the Spanish-language Web pages, what's involved in Alaska's and Horizon's effort to make the airlines more accessible to Spanish-speaking customers?
We're going to be making our check-in kiosks available in Spanish beginning in 2007. We're staffing up our call centers with more Spanish-speaking customer service agents, and we're assigning Spanish-speaking flight attendants to our Mexico flights.
We're also posting Spanish signs at our gates and customer service counters, and we'll be creating a Spanish language portion of our in-flight magazine.
Is your Spanish-language effort focused exclusively on your Mexico flights?
No. There's a considerable domestic component to our effort aimed at Spanish-speaking customers traveling on ours and Horizon's domestic network within the United States.
Alaska Air Group
Airlines: Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air
Headquarters: SeaTac
Mexican cities served: 10
Service to Mexico began: 1988
Number of flights between the U.S. and Mexico each day: 44
john.gillie@thenewstribune.com |
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