The boss of TAP Air Portugal voiced frustration at the growing challenge of complying with regulations in Europe and praised new retailing technologies for stemming the tide of rising costs and complexity.
Welcoming airline delegates to Lisbon for Amadeus’ Altitude25 conference, Luis Rodrigues, TAP Air Portugal chief executive, set out the three factors as airlines look to the future and embrace digital transformation.
The first was customer expectations being set by other sectors that airlines are finding it hard to match. And there is also the need for a mindset change “first and foremost”.
“This is about a mindset change first, then it’s about process change and then finally it’s about a technological change,” he said.
The third factor Rodrigues said related to reversing an existing trend. “We need to simplify and streamline the business.
“The business is getting increasingly complicated to deal with. You have to comply with a bunch of regulations on cyber security, sustainability. AI…you name it.
“Someone had to reverse this trend and modern retailing is one of the tools to simplify the business and reduce the cost of sales. Everything else is going in the wrong direction, something had to go in the right direction.”
Rodrigues said it was becoming too difficult to deal with regulations in Europe. “Thank God someone is fighting this and making things simple and less expensive.”
TAP Air Portugal is marking its 80th birthday this year. Rodrigues said “this industry is not for everyone” and it had “not been an easy journey”, particularly the last 20 years since the turn of the new Millennium.
“And then Covid hit and the company needed assistance to survive. We have taken the opportunity to make sure we engaged in significant transformative effort so we do not go back to the old days. Retailing is part of that discussion.
“We call it modern retailing. Something most people elsewhere call business as usual. This does not look good on our side. This is a compelling reason for us to do it.”
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