Hawaiian amenity kits pose premium leisure questions

by John Walton
734
December 09, 2019
Amenity hawaiian
The international business class amenity kits are attractive. Photo: Hawaiian.

Some airlines design their amenity kits as simple handouts: here you go, have a lip balm and some moisturizer and a pair of socks and an eye mask in a little bag from a premium brand you recognize.

But smart airlines are increasingly thoughtful about it, with brand partnerships and different amenities on different routes.

Hawaiian Airlines is always an interesting case study because its route networks and passenger market segments are quite unusual.

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It has a domestic island-hopping base, as well as connections from the islands to the US mainland, but also has a huge amount of seasonal mid- to long-haul tourism demand, especially from Japan and the southwest Pacific.

This premium leisure market is growing in importance, but its price elasticity is relatively constricting for Hawaiian as an airline.

That’s why it selected the Optimares Maxima seats it uses, which uniquely offer “courtesy aisle access” rather than the less dense direct aisle access many other airlines use.

The carrier figures that so many of its front cabin passengers are couples or family members traveling together that stepping past a loved one is less awkward than climbing over Pat from accounting or a random stranger in the middle of the night.

And so to the new ‘Ēkaha family of soft product, which comprises a range of pillows, blankets, quilts, amenity kits and so on, in partnership with local brand Kealopiko.

I’m not the hugest fan of the coral color — it feels just a little bit too close to the overused “Millennial Pink”, that sort of delicate blushy dusty light pastel that’s been everywhere for five years now — but the design otherwise is really smart.

I particularly like the elasticated pillow that will slip over the seat’s headrest: it’s not new as a concept, but it’s still unusual enough that it’s great to see, especially given that the seat itself doesn’t come with an articulating headrest.

The local partnership angle is particularly important and is something that smart airlines look to do wherever possible.

For example, on a recent first-class flight I took with All Nippon Airways, the airline’s amenity kit was stocked with a little mini-kit of cosmetics from The Ginza, an upmarket Tokyo-based brand from Japan’s largest cosmetics company, Shiseido.

The same brand appeared in the lavatories, which were otherwise the bog-standard (sorry) Boeing 777 loos: but just the right look, feel and branding made it feel very Japanese.

These products certainly feel very Hawaiian too, and it’s more than just the perhaps predictable tropical fern and coral motifs, or the emphasis on natural and organic materials, or the local sustainable partner design company. It’s a gestalt effect, and it’s very effective.

Cleverly, Hawaiian is investing the most product where it makes the most sense: quite a bit of the snazziest product will be available only on its longest flights, like the New York or Boston routes, or on international business class flights to Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the Southwest Pacific.

Not only are these flights the longer ones where amenities make sense, but they are also where the real competition comes from overseas carriers and, to a much lesser extent, from the larger US airlines that put their long-haul aircraft on these longer flights.

On shorter flights, like the five-hour hops between Hawaii and California, or flights to Tahiti and Pago Pago, where competition is heavier and/or yields less plump, the product is different.

In fact, the premium cabin (here marketed as first class rather than international business) offering on these less prestigious routes is the same as the main economy cabin on the more prestigious routes.

amenity
Handing this kit out to passengers up front or down the back, depending on routes, may be a misstep. Photo: hawaiian

This may be a misstep: handing out economy amenities to business class passengers may not go down too well.

It would perhaps have been better to create a separate, even if similar, set of amenities in order to differentiate, particularly where premium leisure travelers are involved.

These passengers are price-sensitive and experience-sensitive, and they’re also keen to ensure they get value for money on their holidays. If they’re splurging, they want to feel like they’re splurging: and an economy amenity pack in first class doesn’t really do that.