Jat reacts to Wizz Air

Jat launching new marketing campaign

Serbia’s Jat is beginning to react to the recent news that Wizz Air will open a base at its hub Belgrade. Jat’s advertising department has been working hard since December last year when visa free travel to the European Union for Serbian citizens came into effect. Under the slogan “Europe for all of us”, Jat launched an intensive sales campaign after both Niki and AirBaltic announced that they were to begin flights to Serbia. Since January 2010, the airline has been broadcasting “Jat News”, shown on several television networks and thirteen radio stations across the country which sees Jat’s PR manager advertising flights and services several times a day. Recently, the airline launched “The new charm of Jat” campaign. Jat’s new cabin crew smiles from eighty nine billboards in Belgrade in order to silence critics that the airline’s crew is old. Now, the airline is launching yet another advertising campaign. Entitled “In safe hands”, filming of the new commercials took place last week at Jat’s hangers in Belgrade with fifteen pilots participating. The new campaign puts the emphasis on Jat’s relatively sound safety record. The airline has also been undertaking other marketing moves this year such as handing out its summer schedule at key sporting and music events, advertising on the Belgrade Arena, advertisements on Serbia’s most popular websites and newspapers and sponsoring the Exit music festival, the Jat Media Centre reports.

Jat’s latest push to counter the Wizz Air invasion is to reduce prices on select routes and introduce the long awaited free taxi service. In an interview to Tanjug given after Wizz Air's announcment, Jat’s CEO Srdjan Radovanović, said that Jat is not backing down from the implementation of the free taxi service for all of its passengers with a return ticket. Passengers will have the ability to hitch a free ride from Belgrade Airport to anywhere in the city and vice versa. The free taxi shuttle would compliment other new services the airline has introduced recently such as new catering, free health insurance and free plastic wrapping for baggage, he outlined. Radovanović said that new competition is healthy and standard for a European country. He says that Jat’s main competitors are well established world carriers operating to Belgrade such as Lufthansa. He outlines that low cost airlines have their own market and have made Jat improve its own services which allows passengers to get much more than what’s on offer at low cost airlines.