Chic new Air France ticket offices combine digital and personal touch

Air France may be plagued by industrial unrest and leadership woes but nobody can argue its new ticket offices lack style. The airline has launched its new downtown ticket office concept in Toulouse and Bordeaux with Nice, Lille, Lyon, Strasbourg and Marseille on their way. The airline says the new offices find a balance between digital services and human presence. Customers can make appointments with a travel advisor via a dedicated app or use self-service desks with digital tablets. There’s a virtual reality experience to showcase new cabins and destinations as well as personal tips adapted to each customer’s profile and expectations. The redesigned offices offer a face-to-face sales area as well as “Design by Air France” section selling airline products such as comfort kits, suitcases, travel bags, passport holders and baggage tags. A “Travel by Air France” area offers projections from the company’s digital travel guide to “give the customer the feeling of having already arrived at their destination”. France’s Le Figaro newspaper has reported that Air France-KLM is closer to appointing a new boss and that it could be Catherine Guillouard, who currently heads the Paris metro. Guillouard spent a is a former Air France chief financial officer who spent a decade at the airline and is on the board of aircraft manufacturer Airbus. However, she has been at her current job for less than a year. The company has been hunting for a new CEO after Jean-Marc Janaillac resigned in May after workers voted down a pay offer. READ:  Air France strikes continue as crisis prompts survival warning. Meanwhile, Air France-KLM on Monday reported that passenger traffic in revenue passenger kilometres was up 3.5 percent in June, with Air France and HOP! Up 3.5 percent and KLM up 3.6 percent. The load factor at the group rose 1.5 percentage points to 88.8 percent while June passenger numbers were up 2.9 percent to 7.74 million.