FAB TALKS
A fresh approach to airport hospitality
In a lively conversation on the airport customer experience, Plaza Premium Group Director of Global Brand and Transformation Mei Mei Song told The Moodie Davitt Report President Dermot Davitt of her ambition to continue to offer travellers more tailored services.
Song shared engaging insights into the journey of the Hong Kong company – founded by her father, the legendary Song Hoi-see, a quarter of a century ago – and talked about continuing his dynamism by bringing in fresh ideas and new concepts.
Plaza Premium Group introduced the world’s first independent airport lounge with the Plaza Premium Lounge at Hong Kong International Airport and Kuala Lumpur International Airport in 1998. Today the company operates the largest network of international airport lounges and related airport hospitality experiences and passenger service solutions.
Mei Mei Song touched on Plaza Premium Group’s desire to continue to offer different experiences
Traveller rewards
Song commented: “Everybody has different moods of travel. There are times when I need a quiet space to work or there are other times when I’m with my friends or my family and I want to celebrate, and that starts in the airport. That’s why we launched ‘Smart Traveller’.
“It puts travel in your hands. You tell me what you want, what you need from your journey, and we will work together with all our different partners to make that happen.”
Smart Traveller is an airports reward programme that incorporates a membership points app with built-in social analytics tools. It is free to join and offers discounts and special offers throughout the airport journey in beauty, wellness, food and drink, car rental and accommodation. Users can enjoy double points on their birthday as well as seasonal promotions.
“Everything in Intervals is deliberately Instagrammable”
–Mei Mei Song
Song talked about the Smart Traveller airport rewards programme
Lost in time
In August, 25 years after launching its first independent lounge, Mei Mei Song cut the ribbon on her Intervals bar concept at Hong Kong International Airport (which later that evening won a FAB Award).
Located 28 metres above the ground on the Sky Bridge, the link between Terminal 1 and the T1 satellite concourse, the space has been created to allow unobstructed sweeping views across the airport’s runways.
The name draws inspiration from the fluidity of time during travel, where standard conventions give way to more ambiguous moments of pleasure. A time-themed cocktail menu was created under the watchful eye of award-winning Creative Director Victoria Chow – as the saying goes, it is always cocktail hour at the airport.
Answering a question from the audience about how the marketing teams spread the word about Intervals, Song touched on another common theme of the FAB event – how pleasure can increase dwell time.
“Everything in Intervals is deliberately Instagrammable,” she said. “A very good example of our social media strategy is how we launched Intervals to coincide with Hong Kong hosting ‘The 50 Best Bars’, so the city was packed with influencers, industry celebrities, cool tattooed bartenders and journalists. And we positioned Intervals as the final destination for everyone after the awards, so we got everybody talking about it and posting about it. So yes, we love local awareness, but that was a lot of global coverage. Just putting out an ad wouldn’t make sense; this is authentic and built on trust.”
FAB eZine
January 2024
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