Thai Airways held its Global Catering Partners Conference “Crafting the Taste of THAI” in Bangkok on October 8 and 9, 2024. The event focused on the airline’s strategic direction, emerging trends, and collaborative initiatives aimed at enhancing the customer experience, particularly regarding inflight food and beverage (F&B). This inspirational conference was highlighted by a partnership milestone and award wins for gategourmet.
Over the course of two engaging days, attendees participated in interactive workshops and culinary sessions, and attended insightful presentations from Thai Airways’ leadership and commercial teams. The airline highlighted its dedication to enhancing customer experience and building trust with stakeholders, using this conference as a valuable opportunity to equip catering partners with the tools and guidance to achieve culinary excellence onboard.
For gategroup, this conference provided an invaluable platform to reinforce its partnership with Thai Airways and demonstrate its commitment to its vision of creating magical journeys for passengers. gategroup was very well-represented, with colleagues attending from Asia Pacific, CEE, NEW, and SEA.
Two key highlights of the conference included:
- Continued Partnership in Japan
During the event, gategroup formalized its ongoing partnership in Tokyo at Narita International Airport (NRT) and Haneda Airport (HND) for the next two years.
Franck Bouat, gategroup’s CCO for Asia Pacific and Managing Director for Asia, stated, “This longstanding relationship has been the cornerstone of our success in Japan over the past decades, and we are very proud to continue this strong collaboration.”
Photo (left to right): Wirush Theparak – TG Head of Customer Experience and Product / Korakot Chatasingha – TG Chief Commercial Officer / Franck Bouat / Miyata Yasuhiro / Lim Ai Jia
Kittiphong Sansomboon – TG Director, Customer Experience & Marketing / Nigel Everard
- Award Recognition
In addition to the renewal of Thai Airways trust, gategroup was also honored with three prestigious awards from Thai Airways: Best Performance Long-Haul for Munich (MUC), Excellent Cooperation and Support for Narita (NRT), and Crew’s Choice Award for Haneda (HND).
With a global collaboration spanning more than 10 stations in Asia Pacific and Europe, the partnership with Thai Airways has grown from strength to strength, especially as we have navigated recent challenges and new opportunities together.
“Thai Airways’ appreciation of our teams’ dedication to service excellence is particularly meaningful to us. We are honored to receive these prestigious awards from Thai Airways, as this recognition holds deep significance for all of us, solidifying our collaboration and showcasing our never-ending dedication to excellence across all our operations,” Franck continued.
The conference was a wonderful platform to connect and further strengthen our close relationships with key Thai Airways counterparts, making it a truly meaningful experience.
About gategroup
gategroup is the global leader in airline catering, retail-on-board and hospitality products and services. gategroup provides passengers with superior culinary and retail experiences, leveraging innovation and advanced technology solutions. Headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, gategroup delivers operational excellence through the most extensive catering network in the aviation industry, serving passengers from over 200 operating units in over 60 countries/territories across all continents. For further information, please visit: www.gategroup.com.
About Thai Airways
THAI operates the airlines business as a full service carrier, which provides the transportation for passengers, goods, parcels and postal through our domestic and international routes, including a warehousing service, ground handling service, ground equipment services, in-flight catering and aircraft maintenance services. THAI and its alliance has a network of routes covering 30 countries around the world. Throughout the period of more than 60 years in the airline business, THAI aims to focus on safety and quality of service with THAI touches for passenger comfort throughout the journey which have made THAI become one of the best airlines in the world guaranteed by the various awards of recognition.
