Consultancy Report: Produced for Royal Melbourne Airlines

Consultancy Report

The airline industry has been hit by the COVID-19 crisis recently. With unfettered consequences, many airlines around the world have grounded almost all of the planes of their fleet. The pandemic hit the airline industry more severely than it did in 9/11 and 2008 financial crisis (see figure 1 below). However, the operational managers, networking teams and commercial executives are still trying to figure out the way to repatriate the passengers and decide on new flight routes, destinations and safety checks (McKinsey, 2020). The question of the hour is related to demand recovery i.e. how long will it take for air travel demand to recover. 

In a response to the above identified situation, this marketing research project is developed to understand the overall impact of COVID-19 on the Royal Melbourne Airline Travel. This marketing project will help the company in identifying necessary initiatives, actions and/or services that are required for commencing the international and domestic flight services. Through this consultancy report, recommendations, reflections and analysis would be conducted on the pre-designed questionnaire developed for the current market research. The aim of this consultancy report is to identify any loopholes, grey areas and opportunities to improve the questionnaire so that data could be collected properly and initiatives for improving international & domestic flights could be taken. 

Part 1- Evaluating the Draft Questionnaire

A: Questionnaire: A Good Source of Data Collection

The research objective is to understand the impact of COVID-19 on Airlines Industry in Australia and to identify the required services and initiatives for commencement of international and domestic airlines. In order to understand the impact of COVID-19 and analyze the needs of the travelers and their expectation from the Airlines, questionnaires and surveys are considered to be a good tool of data collection. A questionnaire is defined as the written document with pre-defined set of questions (Babie, 2007). An effective questionnaire doesn’t need to be lengthy and must be focused on the respondents’ perception and their experiences. In the given case, I would recommend adding more relevant questions specific to COVID-19 and the pandemic so that in-depth and related information related to passengers concerns could be gathered. For example, questions regarding in-flight crew services, amenities, time-on-time temperature checks and corona testing kits should be added. 

B: Appropriateness of Length, Structure & Layout

The current questionnaire is based on open-ended and close-ended questions. However, more close-ended questions are visible as compared to open ended. The questionnaire is appropriate for providing the relevant information with minimum errors (Babie, 2007). However, the current questionnaire seems to be a little dragged off. It should be divided in two blocks where in first section should refer to quick background analysis containing name, age, occupation, travelling purposes, frequent or non-frequent traveler, domestic or international traveler, gender and country of residence. The second section should be targeted on the COVID-19 related questions classified into amenities, safety checks, food, and quality of services, pre-post travelling services, COVID-19 concerns and health monitors. Moreover, some of the questions are appearing to be repetitive in nature for instance question 13 and 14 provides almost similar information regarding concerns of passengers post COVID-19 travelling. Question 16 and 17 can also be compressed into one question. Other than this, the filling details are not provided for the respondents like (tick single response or choose multiple responses).