Cathay staff kick off their shoes with gallery of after-work shots
More than 50,000 people have visited a website that features pictures of Cathay Pacific flight attendants and other frontline staff after they have hung up their uniform for the day.
The novel promotion has been a global hit since its launch four weeks ago with two-thirds of hits coming from abroad.
Employees - including a flight attendant who was runner-up in a Miss Hong Kong competition - have been whisked off to photo studios for the campaign with no payment other than a set of framed photographs as a reward for taking part.
Dozens more staff are now being lined up to have their photographs and profiles added to the online gallery with the aim of increasing its headcount from the present 35 to 100 by the end of the year.
The airline's general manager for marketing James Ginns said: 'We're trying to capture what it is that our employees bring to the job that enables them to get the reaction they get from passengers.
'It's been very popular. We've had 53,000 visits in the first four weeks. It's been particularly popular in Japan, the US, Taiwan, Canada, Australia and the UK.'
Staff had been 'queuing up' to be included in the project, said Mr Ginns, while marketing managers have been working hard to persuade some of the airline's more 'colourful characters' to participate.
'We've featured a semi-professional badminton player, a captain who flies a hot air balloon in his spare time and a married couple from Germany - he's a cargo manager and she is a customer sales officer - who got married in a parked Boeing 747 in Frankfurt.
'We've deliberately gone out to attract a good mixture of men and women to be representative of the staff we have. At the moment it's true we have more women than men on the site.
'Men tend to be shyer. They are worried about what their mates will think. But we will aim to achieve a balance between men and women.'
The campaign, run on a mini site attached to the airline's main website, was organised in response to a survey of 4,000 customers who said Cathay Pacific's best asset compared to rival airlines was its staff, according to Mr Ginns.
'This is a tough time business-wise but we've had a good response online.'
