ETHIOPIA. Ethiopian Airlines has awarded Tourvest Inflight Retail Services a management contract for the carrier’s inflight retail and technology expertise in order to deliver a best in class inflight duty free product solution.
The contract is a major coup for South African company Tourvest.
Ethiopian Group CEO Tewolde Gebremariam said: “In line with the airline’s vision 2025 and in delivering a continuous improvement of our customer offerings, this cooperation with Tourvest will help us to widen the choices of our Sky Duty Free retail [offer] with the best-in-class product varieties and with new services like pre-flight e:commerce orders through our website and with more convenient forms of payment in cash or various credit cards delivered by their TourPOS (Tourvest Point of Sale) inflight tablet device.”
Tourvest Chief Executive Officer Clive Jones said: “Ethiopian Airlines has 76 aircraft in operation with another 42 on order, delivering a service to over 7 million passengers per year, covering 92 international destinations, across five continents. Given these impressive credentials, we are therefore very proud and honoured to be awarded with the opportunity to be associated with such a progressive and respected airline on the continent.”
He continued: “Based on our initial engagements with the Ethiopian Airlines team we are excited by the energy to innovate and provide their customers with a world-class inflight retail experience, which is exactly the mutual trust that we require to create a differentiated value proposition.”
In a statement, the companies described Ethiopian Airlines as the largest and fastest-growing African airline. The carrier wanted to enhance its inflight service “through alignment to global best practice in terms of inflight retail”, the parties noted.
The concession boosts Tourvest’s already strong position in Africa, which includes contracts for South African Airways, Kenya Airways and Angola’s TAAG (Angola). Tourvest’s retail footprint also includes British Airways.
