Integrated Marketing Communications Plan for Virgin Atlantic Essay

Integrated Marketing Communications Plan for Virgin Atlantic - Essay Example The type of customers Virgin Atlantic Airways caters to vary across different status, genders and age. Most of its travelers are business and leisure travelers. Children above 5 years old are allowed to travel on the airline. For those kids who are younger than 5 years, should be accompanied by their guardians or parents. The company also has the policy of accepting trained pets on their flights provided that they are there to carter after a disabled person, for instance a blind person. The airlines are home to passengers who could include friend circles, family troupes and business travelers. Virgin Atlantic Airways attaches a great deal of importance to technology. Technology re-vitalizes and also builds up the expectations of the passengers. Once you are in the air-line business you just cannot undermine the importance of technology in running the air-craft. Virgin Atlantic understands how important it is for its technology to be up-to date and how cortically dangerous it can be i f the fleet is run without a check on latest technology. They have their own set of air-craft engineers who continue to work and improve the airlines at the technical level. Similarly, the airline has also incorporated and put technology to efficient use to entertain passengers during their flight. Technology has been used to come up with more innovative and novel ways for keeping the passengers busy and entertained during the flight. These included various incentives such as video entertainment, Sony watchman, ensuring that there is an individual video screen for every seat. The company’s entertainment was offering at least 20 audio channels and 16 video channels to its passengers. These ideas were implemented as a part of company’s plan to ensure that its passengers feel that they are being returned the right value for the money that they invest in Virgin Atlantic’s airways ticket. Political-Legal: The Heathrow Airport was opened to Virgin in the year 1991 by the UK government. This was when it removed the London Air Traffic Distribution Rules owing to pressure from within the industry. The London Air Traffic Distributions had taken form and effect in the year 1978. They had been implemented to ensure that the traffic between UK’s two main airports Heathrow and Gatwick was fairly distributed so that even Gatwick can make profit. Under the rules, it was stipulated that those airlines which did have an international scheduled service before 1st April 1977 would not be allowed to conduct their operations from Heathrow but would have to use Gatwick. On the international front, the rising trend in travel has been keenly observed by many. As developing countries continue to grow, their citizens have become more and more open to travel. A major trigger in encouraging air travel has been the industry’s privatization and de-regulation. Before the 1980s, most of the airlines especially in countries like US were state-owned.