Delta Air Lines - Research Paper Example

Delta Air Lines, Inc: Tourism Research Paper Delta Air Lines, Inc: Tourism Research Paper Introduction Delta Air Lines, Inc, commonly known as Delta, is a publicly held American airline company operating in travel industry. Delta Air Lines was founded as a crop dusting operation (Huff Daland Dusters, Inc) on 30th May 1924 in Macon, Georgia. The current Delta is the result of a series of mergers with several airlines. The largest and most recent merger was with Northwest Airlines in 2010. Richard H. Anderson is the CEO of the Delta, and Edward Bestian assumes the role of company president. The company is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. The company’s largest hub is also located at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia. Delta’s other major hubs including John F. Kennedy International Airport, Narita International Airport, Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport, and Salt Lake City International Airport. Currently the organization has an extensive domestic and international network spreading across 64 countries, and it was ranked as the world’s largest airline in 2013 by scheduled passengers carried. Based on the evaluation of different corporate aspects of Delta, this paper will draw some potential conclusions about the future scope of the company. Branding and Marketing Delta changed its old logo and introduced the 20th one (Figure 1) on 30th April 2007. The current logo is triangular in shape and red in color. One side of this triangular is slightly darker, and this shade adds some depth to the symbol. Figure 1 Similarly the company changes its marketing slogans from time to time, and the current one is ‘Keep Climbing’. The Delta operates both low cost airlines and full service airlines, and the company targets more on business travelers as well as other high ranked international travelers. The firm uses all traditional and modern media to reach its target markets. Delta pays great attention to internet based marketing and maintain official pages in Facebook and Twitter. In addition, the company invests largely in television advertising. Businesses under the Corporate Umbrella Delta is one of the founding members of the SkyTeam airline alliance and the company has also engaged in joint ventures with Air France-KLM and Alitalia, Virgin Atlantic, and Virgin Australia. In addition, the Delta Air Lines has three major subsidiary businesses including Delta Private Jets, DAL Global Services, and Delta Vacations. The company’s strong presence in the global market coupled with its reputed corporate status assists the Delta management to operate its subsidiaries successfully. When operating subsidiaries, the company is able to share its cost of operations and to improve profitability. Furthermore, Delta is a well recognized brand and hence it is possible for the company to position its subsidiaries effortlessly. Employees Different kinds of jobs ranging from ground staff to pilot are current available at Delta Air Lines. As of 2013 data, this airline company has 77,755 employees worldwide. In addition to the flight crew members, Delta hires employees to manage its IT operations, accounting activities, luggage delivery, and other tourism related services. As described in Delta’s official site, the company offers many attractive benefits including worldwide travel privileges to its permanent staff. Once a newly hired employee completed 30 days of service with the company, he/she is entitled to enjoy the travel privileges offered by the company while flying anywhere on Delta flights. Delta employees’ family members (restricted to spouse, minor dependent children, and parents) are also eligible for using the stated worldwide travel privileges. Employees’ nondependent children, travel companion, family and friends’ guest can enjoy reduced-rate travel on Delta flights. The Delta flights will be free for its employees and their eligible pass riders only if space is available after all revenue passengers have been accommodated (Delta). Global Impact As Ausick (April 26, 2014) reports, the Delta Air Lines has a market share of 16.3%. The company achieved revenue of US$ 37.773 billion in 2013 and a net income of US$ 3.4 billion. While analyzing direct competitors of Delta, it seems that mainly US companies pose serious competition threats to the organization. According to a Forbes report (April 20, 2012), Delta’s main industry competitors include United Continental Holdings, Alaska Air Group, US Airways Group, and Southwest Airlines. While evaluating the ecological impacts of the company’s operations, it seems that Delta pays particular focus to the preservation of ecology and environmental sustainability. Delta’s environmental fact sheet clearly indicates that the company considers the preservation of environment as integral part of its business strategy. The company always strives to be the industry leader in minimizing the environmental impacts of operations, and it has also developed competitive technologies to reduce toxic emissions and to conserve energy and natural resources. The firm’s environmental efforts have been greatly recognized in the global airlines industry over the last 10 years. Delta received two awards from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2008 for its commitment towards waste recycling and environmental protection. The company is really Green or eco-friendly, and has taken a number of environmental initiatives to serve the needs of future generations. To illustrate, “Delta has reduced its CO2 emissions by 30 percent since 2000 through fleet renewal, aircraft retirements, and the replacement of older ground-handling equipment” (Fact Sheets). In addition, the company has made huge carbon offset contribution to planting over 277,000 trees for the purpose of trapping excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (Fact Sheets). Delta Air Lines was the first airline to launch a carbon offset program, and the organization jointly works with environmental agencies like The Nature Conservancy to generate better environmental outcomes (Delta Environmental Sustainability). Similarly, the company pays specific attention to fuel conservation and thus Delta’s fuel efficiency has been improved by 35 percent since 2000. For this, the company uses several techniques such as single-engine taxi procedure, minimizing the amount of water boarded, using lightweight meal carts, and more efficient flight planning and dispatching (Fact Sheets). In the same way, Delta has launched several initiatives to enhance water conservation and electrical energy conservation. In addition, the company performs outstandingly in terms of waste reduction and recycling efforts. It encourages its employees and passengers to reduce the amount of paper they use. Delta was the first airline company to implement a comprehensive in-flight recycling program, and subsequently the company spread its “recycling efforts to include office waste, employee recycling centers and aircraft carpet recycling” (Delta Fact Sheets). Growth Potential As per Morning Star report, while analyzing Delta’s growth as a percentage of 10 year average revenue, it is identified that the organization has constantly improved its growth rate over the last 10 years. Although the 2008-09 global financial crisis limited Delta’s growth to some extent, recent trends indicate that the company strongly returns to its growth track. Since Delta is a well established airline company in the industry, it would be easy for the company to enter new markets and to introduce new products/services. In other words, a strong corporate reputation greatly adds value to the future growth potential of the organization. As the company has improved access to potential funding sources, it can easily finance new ventures or introduce appealing travel packages to address the threats of new market entry. Above all, the organization is an industry leader in promoting environmental sustainability, and this competitive advantage would benefit Delta to meet the interests of modern people who are increasingly concerned about environment safety. It is particularly recommendable for the Delta to improve its offerings with regard to tourism because travel and tourism sectors can really help each other grow. Conclusion From the above discussion, it is clear that Delta is a leading US airline company that shares a significant percent of the global airlines market. The company follows innovative branding and marketing strategies, and it is an industry leader when it comes to energy/resources conservation and environmental sustainability. To sum up, the organization has a great potential for future growth. References Ausick, P. (April 26, 2014). Americas best and worst airlines. USA Today. Delta. Official website. Retrieved from http://www.deltajobs.net/travel_and_benefits.htm Delta Fact Sheets. Retrieved from http://news.delta.com/index.php?s=20301&item=30075 Delta Environmental Sustainability. Retrieved from http://www.delta.com/content/www/en_US/about-delta/corporate-responsibility/environmental-sustainability.html Forbes. (April 20, 2012). Forbes Earnings Preview: Delta Air Lines. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/narrativescience/2012/04/20/forbes-earnings-preview-delta-air-lines-2/ Morningstar. Delta Airlines Inc. retrieved from http://financials.morningstar.com/ratios/r.html?t=DAL Read More