Lufthansa has won kudos for exemplary innovation in the German travel industry. For the successful planning and implementation of the logistics and service chain of its First-Class Terminal at Frankfurt Airport, the airline has landed the “Best Practice Award 2006” from the Travel Industry Club. A prestigious jury comprising senior executives, economics correspondents, consultants and academics selected Lufthansa for the award from among 19 contenders in the travel business. The “Best Practice Award“ was handed to Lufthansa Executive Vice President Services and Human Resources Carsten Spohr by State Secretary Dagmar Wöhrl from the Ministry for Industry and Technology at an official ceremony on the eve of the International Tourism Exchange (ITB) in Berlin on Tuesday.
Jury Chairman Steffen Weidemann, Partner at Roland Berger Strategy Consultants: “With the concept and realisation of its First Class Terminal, Lufthansa has achieved something exceptionally innovative and lasting, which justifiably gives it “first-mover advantage” and which has been excellently implemented. Lufthansa has come up with a quantitavely measurable product which is, simultaneously, contributing qualitatively towards strengthening the airline’s image.”
Dirk Bremer, President of the Travel Industry Club: The spectrum of awards ranges from the “Golden Lion“, “Effie“ or “Bambi“ right through to the “Silver Lemon“. With its “Best Practice Award“, the Travel Industry Club aims not only to honour but primarily to encourage initiative in the industry through excellently implemented examples. In order to spur innovation in the travel industry, this learning process should take place not only between the hotel and airline business but over the entire breadth of the travel services sector. The Travel Industry Club has taken on the role of representing the travel business in all its diversity and symbolising it with the “Best Practice Award“. We want to not just talk but rather to demonstrate with examples how things can be done better. That is what “best practice“ is all about.
Aside from airlines and airports, tour operators and travel agents as well as hotel chains, consultants, Internet companies and industry associations submitted a variety of successful innovations in competition for the Travel Industry Club’s ”Best Practice Award“. Alongside the winning Lufthansa entry, Lindner Hotels & Resorts, Marriott International, the German travel management association and eventcompetence+compagnie consulting company were short-listed among the best five contenders.
Among the members of the Travel Industry Club jury, chaired by Steffen Weidemann,
were Jens Brösel from DERTOUR, Professor Dr. Christian Buer from Heilbronn University, Professor Dr. Roland Conrady from Worms University, Thomas Edelkamp from the 2006 FIFA World Cup™ Accommodation Services, the tourist expert and former chairman of DER, Peter Landsberger, and the business editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine daily, Hans-Christoph Noack.
The Travel Industry Club is an independent network platform of senior executives in the travel industry and other companies in the process chain, who aim through personal commitment to help improve the public profile of the “private and business travel“ sector.
