Seeing Is Believing at ACE ’18. Here’s our take on the show and one inside tip

Having just returned from ACE ’18 in London last week, we wanted to share some of our observations and thoughts about the experience at this year’s show.  This is truly one of those events that is hard to bring to life without seeing it for yourself though.

This is a hands-on show that gives people the opportunity to really walk the talk and learn about the wide variety of services and aircraft that abound throughout the industry.  We participated in the static display with our Challenger 850 amidst a host of other interesting aircraft types such as Airbus, Citation Latitude, Gulf Stream G250 and others for visitors to experience. The show also created the opportunity for attendees to learn more about available software suppliers, handling agents, caterers, chauffeur services and more.

But let’s get back to the planes! Without a doubt, the aircraft are the centre attraction at this show. It’s a fantastic static display with so many beautiful aircraft available to view and tour. Just watching the continuous buzz among the visiting brokers gathering to discuss and compare notes in the middle of the display area was an event in itself.  This was an engaged group of executives who were clearly on a mission to see what the industry will offer to help them create memorable experiences for their own customer base.  They were quick to ask questions and seemed to enjoy learning from individual conversations with pilots, crew and sales staff at each display.

Given the experience level of most of this audience, we wondered what they would be looking for when touring the static display. After all, they’ve seen a lot of aircraft in their time and would be less easy to impress.

So, here’s our inside tip for static display presentations:  Small Surprises.

Yes, small surprises, that’s what makes the difference. This audience has seen all the big innovations and aircraft designs before, but they may not be familiar with some things on your aircraft that create better passenger experiences.  We saw the “ah hah” moments on their faces that told us when they found something interesting and surprising about our aircraft so that we could leverage the benefits and talk about how our passengers appreciate that feature.  For example, most of our visitors were really surprised at the size of the cargo hold on our CL850.  Again, this was something that they had to see to believe. They didn’t know that this aircraft has the largest baggage capacity in its class and when they saw it, they immediately started to think about the advantages it would provide for their customers – band equipment, golf trips, ski trips etc. are clearly not a problem with this jet.  Even funerals can be accommodated (our 850 cargo hold can actually transport a coffin).  Seeing this feature in person helped the brokers understand the benefits to their customer base. And yes, we see the irony in our “small surprise” being our large cargo hold.

That’s our tip for your next static display! Think about the not so obvious details. Let your potential customers see and believe in small surprises throughout their tour. We look forward to seeing you all at the next show.

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