Emirates Airline Sustainability

REPORT

Emirates is an airline company is a reputable airline company worldwide. It is a carrier of Dubai aiming to be Hong Kong’s Gulf. However, the world’s economic structure is currently taken into consideration as the main make up to service economy. Emirate provides its excellent services to a lot of people though the service sectors in the airline industry have incorporated the criteria of service marketing in order to ensure corporate sustainability rapidly since it is very convenient and a quicker way of gaining a competitive advantage over other competitors (Min & Joo, 2016). Emirates’ economic shift is currently manifested in the service sector signified by its sustainability in the highly competitive industry. Actually, Emirates relies significantly on advertising and marketing to be its main strategy of development and sustenance. This firm is entirely under the ownership of the government but do not receive support from the government. Therefore, the company is flexible and tries to adopt to new international trends as well as strategies such as corporate social responsibility to ensure corporate sustainability (Min & Joo, 2016). Additionally, Emirates airline is considerate about the environment through maintaining gas emission lower than the international standards as well as they care for the wildlife too. This report therefore discusses about Emirates airline corporate sustainability.

            Majority of airline companies in United Arab Emirates are sensitive on concerns regarding competition therefore there most of them including Emirates airline are toping in the list of well performing companies worldwide (Squalli, 2014). Although being among the top companies, Emirates has not attained enough. The most significant thing that the company has been straggling for is to maintain a corporate sustainability as well as retain its status quo of being the top performing company in the airline industry (Sustainability & Competitive Advantage, slide 6). Owing to this, performance is on the basis of profitability or economic success which influences the firms’ sustainability it activities as a top service provider within the competitive global market which is evidently applying to Emirates airline.

            Economic or financial performance that has enhanced Emirates sustainability is due to its operation in the industry for a long time of more than thirty years. In this duration, Emirates has never encountered any kind of financial crisis (Curry & Gao, 2012). This suggests that Emirates has established a good business reputation which has facilitated its corporate sustainability since its establishment up to date. Actually, Emirates has developed and grown significantly over time from its start when it was established on dnata. During that period, dnata was the sales executive operating for about 25 airlines (Curry & Gao, 2012). It is therefore vivid that during its conception, Emirates airline competition from the existing and already established airline companies within the airline transport industry. Emirates has however manage to maintain its sustainability in this competitive industry due to its economic advantage.

            All through from the time that Emirates was new, the company has been so focused on keeping up with the competition in the industry and kept evaluating their progress through the financial performance. Suppose Emirates would have performed poorly economically, this would have simply accounted for their failure (Hussain, Al Nasser, & Hussain, 2015). Therefore, to maintain its sustainability, the company undertakes annual check on their performance in order to determine their progress and areas of weaknesses that needs to be improved on. This has led to the continuous growth of the company as it is even evident the company at the moment owns their own aircraft unlike earlier before when they used to lease aircrafts from other international Pakistani airlines (Sustainability & Competitive Advantage, slide 8). Since its conception, Emirates has continuously established itself to be a top performer in the airline industry. The company’s sustainability and progress has been significantly been facilitated by their economic performance giving them a competitive advantage over other airlines.

For the previous few decades, Emirates economic performance has facilitated it to fund the reinvestment plans for making the company to be competitive within the industry and also ensure its sustainability. One remarkable performance for Emirates was during the financial years of 1995-1996 and 1996-1997 whereby profitability significantly escalated by Dh 62,900,000 as well as Dh 115,000,000 correspondingly (Nataraja & Al-Aali, 2011). The company’s profitability increased by 38% being the best record ever set. This was due to the diversification and improvement of services by Emirates through the introduction of telecommunication in the Airbuses as well as equipment of the airbuses with flight fax facilities (Sustainability & Competitive Advantage, slide 10). Therefore, these expansion plans made a significant direct impact on the state o utility thus making the airline to be exceptional and standout from the rest of the airlines because it was the first company to come up with these services.

The corporate governance has enabled to make Emirate to be different from other airlines because of its luxurious travelling, high quality facilities as well as quality services delivered. Emirates has been ranked to be among the top 5 airlines worldwide and seeks to be the largest airline in the world in the future (O’Connell, 2011). The present trends within the airline industry have made Emirates to be very popular as well as efficient service marketing strategies facilitating the sustainment within the competitive environment. This industry is broadening at a rapid rate, together with Emirates because of the adoption of low cost carriers due to the provision of the International Air Transport Association (O’Connell, 2011). Literally, the aviation industry at the moment is emphasizing on facts contributing to the increased customer expectations as well as focus on cost cutting on services. Although Emirates faces a stiff competition from its competitors such as Qatar Airways, British Airways and Air France, it appears that Emirates is more popular and doing better than its competitors because of its expansion on cargo shipping as well as their focus on customer satisfaction to be their prime priority. Therefore, it can be regarded that Emirates has efficiently obtained a lead, sustainability and competitive advantage due to its proper and effective corporate governance.

Emirates has retained to be a socially responsible company to the society. Essentially, a social responsible company helps in improving its sustainability as their concern of the society attracts more customers. Emirates has been socially responsible by sponsoring various sports events. This has not only enabled the company to market itself and gain popularity but also gained trust from the people. Such sponsorships are very important for the company in its operations because majority of the people view them as projects displaying social responsibility (Hussain et al., 2015). In essence, a socially responsible firm is normally treasured by the society of which it is the target market. For an organization to undertake sponsorships, trust must be established by the party being sponsored regarding that the sponsoring company will maintain to top in the industry. It is therefore vivid that customer establish trust on firms in order to get into long term contracts by beginning with monitoring their economic performance. Moreover, the most critical thing to achieving sustainability that Emirates has observed is that it has assured its customers as well as other concerned parties regarding the business before involving them in long-term deals. This has really facilitated the sustainability of Emirates as it has been able to maintain and even improve the number of customers that they attend to.

Moreover, Emirates has well-established corporate governance. The company is under a good and effective leadership. Essentially, a company’s performance depends on the type of leadership that it has. Emirates has always been focused in achieving their targets and the company’s mission (Hussain et al., 2015). The company has however been noted to be continuously thriving and doing well in the airline industry. This performance has been significantly contributed by the good corporate governance provided by the leaders of Emirates. To achieve and maintain sustainability in such a competitive industry, the leaders of Emirates has proven to be top class and effective since it has enabled the company to thrive and sustain its quality and reliable services that have attracted more customers thus leading to the company’s profitability.

            Emirate’s external environment can be explained through the political perception about the company, political contracts existing between countries about airline operations which have greatly influenced the company (Sustainability & Competitive Advantage, slide 12 ). Emirates corporate governance and leadership has taken an active lead in follow up on these aspects. For Emirates airline’s case, it has taken advantage on the Dubai’s government open sky policy so as to be the biggest airline company worldwide through competition and neither through protectionism (Hussain et al., 2015). In social dimension, Emirates is described that it has used the benefits of cultural as well as social diversities internationally and in various areas because of the different customer demand (Squalli, 2014). The economic aspect portrays that the company is a major top brand worldwide because of its high revenue it gets annually. Additionally, the corporate governance of Emirates has ensured that they adopt advanced technology in their operations so as to make the company sustainable as well as to be a leading airline operator.

            Emirates is a law abiding company. The company conforms to the environmental laws set by always aiming at sustainability and also be an eco-friendly company in their activities. Essentially, Emirates’ goal is reducing the emissions as well as the carbon print as they have put it in writing in their Emirates Group’s Environmental Policy (Nataraja & Al-Aali, 2011). By ensuring that their operations are environmentally friendly, it helps in cutting costs and expenses as well as reduces pollution. Due to their conformity with the environmental laws, Emirates has stayed away from getting in trouble with the government or environmental organizations. This also has enabled them to avoid criticism from concerned parties who value environmental protection and conservation. Getting in trouble with the government and also receiving a lot of criticism affects a company negatively and can lead to the termination of the company from operating thus impacting the company’s sustainability. The corporate governance of Emirates has ensured its sustainability by ensuring that all operations of the company meets the environmental standards by making sure that their entire processes are eco-friendly.

            In the current business generation, customer satisfaction is regarded as the most vital aspect of conducting businesses. It is also regarded as a standardized performance as well as organizational excellence (Min & Joo, 2016). For Emirates, their quality of service is the product of lots of the customers’ service consumption whereas it fully relies on the consumers’ view regarding the service delivery by the company. Through assessment of Emirate’s customer expectations, it is determined that because of high tech services as well as luxury travelling experience which the clients gets from Emirates, it is vivid and obvious that customer expectation levels will rise and owing to that Emirates has considered putting more effort and emphasis on their customers’ satisfaction as well as service quality since they are interrelated so as to contribute to the company’s sustainability.

            Emirates has ensured that it establishes a good relationship and social status with the society they are operating in. It has ensured that it does not conflict with the society especially those in their neighborhoods but instead live in harmony with them and of course involve the society to participate in decision making of certain projects or initiatives (Squalli, 2014). It has created a good connection with the society. Literally, eighty percent of UAE’s population is emigrants as per the World Bank making it sensitive to diverse socio-cultural traits. Therefore, to avoid conflict and as well to ensure the customer’s satisfaction is met, Emirates takes into consideration the society by addressing their diverse needs.

            Currently businesses have become very competitive worldwide. In the aviation industry, competition is increasing day by day. To sustain the competition in this competitive environment and as well to gain new customers as well as retaining the existing customers every company tries to execute various types of operations whereby customer loyalty can be established. It is recognized as relationship marketing or service marketing (CRM) (Hussain et al., 2015). There are a number of strategies that Emirates has taken so as to ensure increased customer loyalty in order to gain sustainability in this industry. One of the main interventions that Emirates uses to gain customer loyalty is the on-time arrivals as well as departures. A lot of customer is traveling due to business motives. According to these people, time matters and to them, every second values. Therefore, offering on-time arrival and departures literally increases customer loyalty. The corporate governance of Emirates has worked had to ensure that this is met. Apparently, Emirates airline is popular for its luxurious facilities as well as other quality services. The corporate governance of the company has provided strict policies as well as standard operations procedure on how customers have to be served and treated (Nataraja & Al-Aali, 2011). For instance, all passengers are given non-stop entertainment together with latest news while they are on board to keep them entertained and informed. Also the passengers have the option of watching movies and their popular TV shows. Various types of gaming are also offered to passengers. These are the pro-active inventions that the corporate governance of Emirates has introduced which have helped the company to remain sustainable in the competitive industry. This has enabled it to build a customer loyalty that has enabled it to thrive.

            To sum up, Emirate airline has an outstanding corporate sustainability despite the competitive environment they are operating in. It is evident that sustainability of this company has been facilitated by environmental, social, corporate governance and economic factors. Literally, the most important thing that the company has observed is establishing a customer loyalty that has enabled it to gain sustainability.