A New Airline Brand Model + A Conversation With John Pagano, Red Sea Global

March 30, 2023

In the latest episode of the ‘Sustainability in the Air’ podcast, Red Sea Global’s CEO John Pagano speaks with SimpliFlying CEO Shashank Nigam and shares how the developer is rethinking eco-tourism that will allow you to travel not just net-zero, but true climate positive.

You can listen and subscribe to the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Podcast Addict and Google podcasts.

Or, read the full deep dive on our sustainability hub here.

The Prodigal Sun

By re-thinking the entire model of what tourism can be — and should be — in the future, Red Sea Global is on a mission to prove that good business can go hand-in-hand with a greener planet. As Pagano says, we know what we’ve done wrong in the past, and we know the reasons for the current climate and ecological crisis. And it’s up to us to not repeat those mistakes.

“The early advice I got from our engineers was to go solar, produce energy during the day, send excess power into the grid and then draw that power back at night,” recalls Pagao. “But that would be a bit of a fraud, right? Because what I send to the grid in the morning doesn’t come back to me at night.” Instead, Pagano decided to go 100% renewable by investing in the most freely and abundantly available energy source in the Kingdom: the sun.

“We are now creating the largest tourism destination in the world that is powered 100% by renewable energy 24 hours a day. We are also the largest microgrid in the world and are building the biggest battery storage system in the world today, at 1.2-gigawatt hours or 500-megawatt hours,” states Pagano.

Our Take

Consider what Pagano says: “We’re funded by the public investment fund; we don’t have the usual commercial constraints and drivers of short-termism and short-term profit. I don’t have shareholders saying to me: where are my returns, where are my dividends. So we could take a much longer-term view and do things better. As we got further into it, I saw the opportunity to lead not only what we were doing in the Kingdom and in the region, but to actually be the leaders in a global transition.”

So here it is, the elephant in every company’s sustainability conversation – how are we to succeed if we cannot survive commercially? It is a difficult but urgent question that must be reckoned with.

However, as Pagano says in the podcast, the climate crisis does not lack solutions; it lacks the will and willingness to act upon it.

Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Podcast Addict, Google podcasts or on our sustainability hub here. Season 3 is brought to you by our sustainability partners, Cirium and CarbonClick.

A new framework for airlines to build lasting brands in the age of sustainability

The airline industry is truly like no other. It is cyclical, incurs high fixed costs, faces uncertainties due to heavy dependency on fluctuating factors like weather and oil prices, and has a length of engagement with the customer that is rare in other industries.

Despite these unique features of airline brand engagement, most airline marketers apply the same generic marketing principles that are used for other consumer products.

And now there’s a new challenge on the horizon: the need to operate sustainably and reduce the impact on the environment. How can airline brands become remarkable given this new reality?

Sustainability comes into focus. We believe an ideal airline brand model would account for the realities of business and the unique nature of the industry.

The 6X+S model helps guide an airline’s branding approach by focusing on six key levers with sustainability as an overarching consideration for each.

Explore these concepts and the accompanying cases studies featuring United Airlines, Air New Zealand, Schiphol Airport, and others in our new whitepaper!

As a subscriber, you can automatically get access to the report here (click the arrow at the top left of the viewer if you prefer to download a PDF version).