Emirates: The Media Company That Happens to Fly Jets Too
Photo Credit: The new in-flight entertainment aboard an Emirates jet. Emirates
Skift Take
When you dig into how much it invests in its in-flight entertainment, Emirates is actually a flying media company. Its investment is hugely passenger-centric, but advertisers certainly don't mind reaching a highly qualified audience.
On Experience
Colin Nagy is a marketing strategist and writes on customer-centric experiences and innovation across the luxury sector, hotels, aviation, and beyond. You can read all of his writing here.
We tend to think of media companies as the things we sit down with after work, or the brands bringing us blockbusters at the cinema. But one of the most unexpected media companies also is in the business of slinging Airbus A380s around the globe.
Emirates, the Dubai-based carrier, has one of the most sophisticated approaches to buying media and providing entertainment for passengers traversing the world.
The customer experience makes almost every other experience in the sky look anemic by comparison. The strategy makes sense, as the airline is known for its long-haul routes, the ones on which you tend to read a book, sleep seven hours, and still have time to watch a series. They are, in many ways, Netflix, Spotify, and a TV station rolled into one with a captive audience.
Their latest version of the so-called IFE system, also known as ICE (information, communications, and entertainment) offers 3,500 channels of entertainment, and averages around 1,000 movies from around the wo
