Amid these challenges, Lufthansa competes in the region and on the world stage by focusing on product optimization. It’s about being methodical and smart every time the company implements a plan. “Just adding more flight attendents isn’t a smart solution for us to improve service,” Bülow says. “It’s not a financially viable option, either, given the comparatively high cost of labor in Europe.”

Lufthansa Group also designed the “seamless travel” experience for businessmen to take advantage of its multiple European hubs. That way, an executive can fly through one hub and back through another, possibly on a subsidiary carrier, and yet still receive a consistent quality of service throughout the entire journey.

For Lufthansa Group, it became clear the time was right for its contrarian play two years ago, when the company completed several acquisitions and investments in Europe and North America that allowed it to roll out its multi-hub plan. Its recent acquisitions have laid the groundwork for a strategy that benefits business and luxury travelers throughout the world – and, especially, the Arab world. That’s because its corporate holdings and cross-brand alliances are such that a businessman can get between any two cities more efficiently and faster than using any other airline. Not to mention the fact that the Middle East is an area of focus for the company. It has 30 flights out of Saudi Arabia each week alone. “With their unparalleled European route network, the airlines of the Lufthansa Group are the first choice for travel to and from the Middle East,” the company’s regional vice president for sales & service, Joachim Steinbach, says.

For instance, a trip might involve something as simple as a flight from Riyadh to Frankfurt. But suppose the businessman has meetings in Zurich a week later and then he has to fly to Dubai. He could make the entire trip in one booking that might involve various airline brands, but everything would be under the Lufthansa corporate umbrella. This is especially true for European connections, where he would fly Lufthansa to Frankfurt and Swiss to Zurich. Depending on where he ended up in Europe before his return flight to Dubai, he might choose to fly on either of two brands or on Austrian Airlines if he were to depart from Vienna.

Perhaps the greatest advantage of the multi-hub strategy is that travelers receive first-class, five-star treatment in more than just one location. Its three-tier lounge concept, featuring business class, senator, and first class lounges, is the gold standard of the industry and, on the ground, the first-class lounges are similar to five-star hotels in terms of their amenities and service.

Guests are surrounded with amenities that make them forget they are at an airport; personal relaxation rooms, exclusive personal washrooms with showers or with a Jacuzzi. There is even a spa area with certified therapists. As for the gourmet, there is pre-flight dining, a cigar lounge, and bar. And it gets even better for guests departing from Frankfurt. There’s a dedicated First Class Terminal at the Frankfurt hub from which passengers can choose to depart.

These features are especially meaningful to Gulf businessmen. They can even hire private jet and private car services between airports. In fact, at the Frankfurt, Munich, and Zurich hubs, there’s a private car that first-class passengers can take from their exclusive lounges to the airplane. Within the Frankfurt lounge is a dining area that could rival any top restaurant, and a spa that offers such packages as the “Anti-Jetlag Facial.”

By 2013, Lufthansa will have spent $192 million renovating its lounges around the world. Even the flooring in the first-class restrooms on board the airplanes will be outfitted in gray, simulated stone that looks similar to the real slate floors of the spas and shower rooms of its airport lounges. They’ve left no stone unturned when it comes to the marketing campaign to tout the new cabin design. “Freedom vs. Walls” and “Grace vs. Grandeur” advertisements are meant to highlight the fact that the airline’s new interiors are all about understatement.

Lufthansa is a carrier that focuses on executives and how they travel. The airline allocates more space (38 percent of its cabins) to business class, a figure that leads the industry. Its Star Chefs program, for instance, is a decade old this year, and has been a hallmark of the business-class and first-class cabins. Every two months, a celebrity chef is invited by the airline to create an entire menu for its first- and business-class cabins. Because food is one of the most important aspects of any flight – people pass the time on long-haul journeys best when they are eating – Lufthansa has renewed its focus on the Star Chefs program as it rolls out its new interior designs and marketing campaigns.

There are plans to make passengers more involved in the selection of meals. As part of its 10th anniversary celebration for the Star Chefs program, Lufthansa will let passengers select from among the 60 or so menus of the past decade before boarding their flights. “Even how breakfast is served is another small product development that optimizes the product,” says Bülow. “It’s those tiny little things that add up to form a big picture.”

Lufthansa teamed up with the prestigious Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics to study how the human threshold for taste and smell changes in the ambient low pressure of an aircraft cabin. The air pressure in the cabin of an airplane flying at 33,000 feet is similar to the air pressure of someone atop a mountain at 10,000 feet. Add to the experience the low humidity and vibrations of the plane, and a passenger’s taste buds and nerve endings become a lot less sensitive.

The Fraunhofer study found that the perception of salt is reduced by as much as 30 percent. The perception of fructose (the sugar in fruit) and sucrose (table sugar) is reduced by some 20 percent. Aromas of herbs are diminished. Yet the taste threshold for acidity remains the same.

That’s why the study determined that over-spicing food is not a solution for airline caterers. Nor is adding salt or sugar. All these elements influence the interplay of aromas in a particular dish, so the solution is to master how and to what extent spices, sugar, and salt are combined so that a passenger gets the best taste at cruising altitude.

Speaking of food palates, we’d be irresponsible if we didn’t mention to our readers who smoke that Lufthansa Group hasn’t forgotten about tobacco aficionados. True, smoking affects a palate more than altitude and humidity combined. And smokers are often relegated to the darkest, grubbiest areas of airports should they want to indulge in a drag or two. That’s why they should check out the elegant “Smokersbar” at the Swiss International Air Lines lounge at the Zurich airport. It’s an astonishing 91 feet long, which could very well be a record for a smoking bar anywhere.

If the planning and development of all these accoutrements sound fun, well, they are, according to the Lufthansa employees we spoke to. But there are just as many employees who are part of the behind-the-scenes technology infrastructure that, although not as flashy, are just as important to ensuring Lufthansa’s redesign and expansion strategy goes off without a hitch.

Although it’s true that all the major airlines share what is essentially the same technology, it’s how they employ that technology that gives them an edge. One of the stumbling blocks for many airlines over the past decade has been the transition to the check-in kiosk from the counter-and-agent model. Most kiosks were haphazardly thrown into spaces designed for counters, creating bottlenecks.

Kiosks are no longer an afterthought. Lufthansa, for instance, has focused on how to make the kiosk experience better than the traditional human interface. First and foremost is an ambitious goal: By the end of this year, 80 percent of Lufthansa passengers will check in by the self-service model. The idea is that clients should be able to swap between Web, mobile, and kiosk check-ins without much thought.

“It’s what I call the ‘simplify-the-business’ strategy,” the manager of Global Passenger Processes, Susanne Zauner, says. “With our mobile boarding pass, you can receive it as an email or pick it up as a text with a link to the Web.”

In the near future, don’t be surprised if Lufthansa begins offering new features that enable passengers to navigate quickly through the airport terminals of the world. Zauner is even considering a system that will allow passengers to receive a ticket issued and printed onboard a plane when they’ve missed their connecting flight. “When a customer learns about a problem after it’s been solved, it’s not really a problem, is it?” she says.

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