Three speakers who seemingly had nothing to do with each other, but still managed to captivate the audience. During the TravConnect event organised in collaboration with Travelport and Sanoma on 12 November. At Schiphol, Mark Ogertschrug of IKEA, Anthony Drury of easyJet and Ben Droste of XCOR showed how they serve their customers without losing sight of the company’s core values. Young professionals and established names from the Dutch travel industry gathered in the luxurious and atmospheric Summum lounge of the General Aviation Terminal at Schiphol-East. Anthony Drury, easyJet’s Head of Business, looked back on the two decades that the orange airline has existed. “Twenty years ago, we offered our first flight from Luton to Glasgow for £29.99, the price of a pair of jeans. Now that flight costs the same. You pay three times as much for a pair of jeans.’ Mark Ogertschrug tried to dispel a number of prejudices about IKEA. No Allen key, missing screws and the ball pit – IKEA offers affordable design at a reasonable price, which is also sustainably produced. And the customer can buy it however he wants. “We are always strong in bricks, but more and more customers want to order IKEA furniture via clicks. The Netherlands is one of the first countries where we introduced omnichannel retailing.’ Ben Droste was one of the founders of SXC Curaçao, the space company that is now called XCOR. His goal: to enable suborbital tourism. ‘Within five years, we will be making commercial space flights. The next step: flying to Australia in two hours.’ Sanoma and Travelport look back on a successful event. ‘It’s a forum like you wouldn’t find anywhere else with a nice dynamic between speakers and attendees,’ says Diederik van Dam of Travelport.
