Qatar Airways - #NoBorders

Qatar Airways - #NoBorders

On June 5th, a dispute between Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain on one hand and Qatar on the other, directly affected Qatar Airways.

Flights between Qatar and the three neighbouring countries (and Egypt) were stopped. This came as Qatar Airways had only recently added a ninth destination in Saudi Arabia, Yanbu.

In addition, with much of the surrounding airspace closed, Qatar Airways has now had to take costly and time-consuming detours to reach its Doha hub.

Qatar Airways’ response has been to post a series of social media ads and posts using the hashtag #NoBorders. A short one minute video uploaded on 18 June, had the strap-line, “travel makes us human. Qatar Airways believes that the sky is better without borders. And that the entire world is all of ours to explore.”

The voiceover then explains that “travel goes beyond borders and prejudice, teaches compassion and is a necessity for all.”

In doing so, the Qatar Airways posts and ads resemble the ‘Fronteras’ campaign rolled out by Aero Mexico last year in response to the calls by (then Presidential candidate, now US President) Donald Trump.

Aero Mexico’s ad, created by Ogilvy, led with the message “Borders. On land they can maintain distances. But in the sky … we show you it’s different.”.

While Qatar Airways has pushed out proactive marketing messages in response to the crisis, it’s obviously crucial to in the first instance take care of the basics and let passengers know what is happening, when, why and what is going to be done about it.

This was the subject of Episode 53 of the SimpliFlying Live Show, where CEO Shashank Nigam pointed out that Qatar Airways had struggled to provide passengers with timely information on flight cancellations and delays.

Shashank’s conclusion was that the problems faced by Qatar Airways, as well as the earlier crisis faced by British Airways when its IT system shut down, shows the need for every major airline to have a social media command centre.

The reasons are three-fold. First of all, you need to listen to what’s being said and correct any rumours if necessary.

Second you need to be able to escalate and take action fast, something that doesn’t happen if the social media team works in isolation. Third, there needs to be integration with other teams, in particular operations.

In the broadcast, Shashank cites a number of airlines that have done this and done it well, including KLM, American Airlines and SouthWest.

Key Take-Away

Doing something proactive around the crisis made sense for Qatar Airways, especially as the airline itself was not as fault and most passengers will have understood this.

At the same time, as Shashank Nigam points out in his broadcast, what happened to Qatar Airways shows why airlines have to have their social media response systems sorted out beforehand. When a crisis happens, it’s already too late.