The Japan Times WORLD EYE REPORTS GERMANY'S RHINE-MAIN REGION
©THE JAPAN TIMES	Thursday, October 25, 2001

Ascending into German skies Rolf Kaptur is bringing something to German skies that is still relatively rare: quality service. Head of ANA (All Nippon Airways) in Frankfurt, he is radiant as he sips his coffee and discusses the growing awareness of his airline within the German market. Already the biggest Asian carrier in terms of passenger numbers, ANA's recent global results have shown a total of 50 million passengers transported last year. Despite all its Asian success, however, ANA is still only at take-off stage in the German market.

Rolf Kaptur aims to take ANA to the top.

"We started here in Frankfurt only eight years ago," Kaptur comments. "When we started our business here ANA made the choice to focus only on the Japanese market in Europe. But with the decline in travel by Japanese corporate executives, we have now started to look towards the local German market." With competition within the airline industry at an all-time high and the German flagship carrier Lufthansa Dominating the domestic market, some have doubted the viability of ANA's strategy of tapping into the German corporate traveler sector. Kaptur, on the other hand, a former Lufthansa man himself who had lived in Japan for 11 years, is banking on what he likes to call "a quality of service that is cultural."

"I had a conversation with the CEO of Honda here in Germany and he asked me, being a German, about how he could educate their dealers on what service is all about," says Kaptur, illustrating his concept. "So he finally decided to take 50 of his best dealers and fly them to Japan on ANA. Starting with the flight to Japan he wanted his dealers to experience what quality service is about. You have to realize that our way of thinking about service at ANA is very different from western airlines concepts' because it is cultural."

Kaptur's enthusiasm for quality service alone has not been sufficient to attain market leadership. Having been on the market for only eight years, ANA has had to play a game of branding catch-up to many of its rivals.

"One of the major obstacles we have had in marketing ANA to the local German market has been the obscurity of our name. ANA does not really conjure up images of an airline, and a Japanese one at that," he explains. "To overcome this we have had to implement a focused public relations effort geared specifically to the German business traveler."

The quintessential ANA man, Kaptur schedules frequent speaking engagements not only promoting his airline to the German business community but also promoting more tourism between Japan and Germany.

"I think there is one big hurdle to overcome when looking at the growth of German tourism to Japan, and that is the very expensive image of Japan," he adds. "But that is just an image. What Germans have to realize is that Japan is like any other country in the world. There are expensive places where one will be required to spend money but at the same time one can go about seeing the country for a very reasonable price."

All signs now point to a surge of growth for ANA in the German market: an increasing market share among German corporate travelers, a steady foothold in the Japanese corporate market and growth in German tourism to Japan. After eight years of hard work and preparation take-off could be here at last.