Services

Passenger mobility is both a strategic success factor and an environmental challenge for our global economy. Managements throughout the transportation and travel services industries face a similar set of business challenges. Although strategic challenges and economies differ by sub-sector and geography, transportation and travel services companies generally operate on low margins against strongly increasing competition. All companies welcome large groups of customers on a daily basis and strive to make their travel experience essentially faultless while exceeding their expectations. Intense day-to-day competition requires a strong focus on tactical management, more so than in many other industries. Regular price and capacity adjustments require daily operational management skills that are highly numbers-driven.

What skills are needed now?

Transportation and travel services are based on “origin and destination” logic. As network businesses, the sub-sectors share many of the management issues of key functions like corporate strategy, finance, marketing, sales, and operations. For example, network planning, schedule design, and yield management required by railways, regional bus operators, and airlines all need similar functional management talent.

Some of the major sub-sectors, like the aviation industry, have been facing deregulation for many years now, whereas others, like railways or urban transit operators in Europe, are at the beginning of such a process of privatization and/or liberalization. Executive talent from more advanced sub-sectors often switch to sub-sectors in the process of deregulation, transferring their transformation expertise from other sub-sectors.

For a number of critical functional areas, companies providing transportation and travel services may prefer to seek best-practice knowledge from outside the industry. We believe that the need to hire functional talent from well established FMCG, automotive or other players will continue. In particular, transportation and travel Services companies may wish to consider key aspects such as corporate sales, customer relationship management, innovation management, risk management, strategic purchasing, lean operations, and lean maintenance.

Although the cyclicality of the industry varies by sector, passenger growth is strongly linked to overall GDP development and other fundamental factors. These fluctuations, which are particularly evident in the aviation industry, mean that organizations need to be highly flexible, and ready to quickly adjust or remove capacities as required. Strong operational talent is key in this sector.

A new wave of consolidation has started in the airline sector, and current moves in the European railway industry indicate a similar trend for the future. At present, the focus seems to be on consolidating regional market positions. However, we expect that there will ultimately be a limited number of truly global mainline carriers.

How can Egon Zehnder International support the transportation and travel industry?

Egon Zehnder International’s Passenger Transport and Travel Practice builds on an extensive experience in working with our clients in airlines, airports, rent-a-car, travel services, tour operators, passenger railways, regional bus and urban transit.

The ability to make insightful decisions about talent in the transportation and travel industry is today’s most enduring source of competitive advantage, and also a management challenge. We concentrate on helping clients achieve this advantage through the identification, assessment and recruitment of talented professionals with exceptional knowledge of the transportation and travel sector. As companies grow in size, complexity and international reach, the competence profiles required from management talent will change substantially in the future.

How we operate

Over the past 5 years, we have completed more than 400 searches, working with clients on senior general management positions as well as specific mandates such as network and schedule management, yield management, strategic purchasing and lean operations. Our client base is international and our searches have a very strong cross-border element.

Our ability to leverage our Passenger Transport and Travel Practice, which includes consultants with primary expertise and interest in these businesses, enables us to assemble a global team which assures our clients of the best possible solution.