Hainan Airlines provides limo service in US

Jessy Nie and her daughter Lily Li become the first customers to receive a warm welcome from the Hainan Airlines' executive team when they land at the Sea-Tac Airport in Seattle on Wednesday. From left: Joel Chusid, executive director of Hainan Airlines USA, Jessy Nie and her daughter Lily Li, Zhou Yingli, general manager of Hainan Airlines Seattle office. This month Hainan began offering free private limousine service for business-class passengers flying on the airline's Seattle-Beijing route, making Hainan the first and only carrier to offer this service in Seattle for passengers traveling between the US and China. DENG YU /CHINA DAILY

Jessy Nie and her daughter Lily Li from Beijing never expected for a big team to be waiting for them at the baggage claim area when they landed in Seattle on Wednesday.

"I just searched the website and found the service, never knowing I was the first to order the free service in Seattle," Nie told China Daily after the Hainan Airlines executive team at Seattle welcomed her and her daughter with a limo driver.

Zhou Yingli, general manager of Hainan Airlines' Seattle office, had been waiting for Nie and her daughter for about an hour and was excited about the new service, which he believes will give Hainan Airlines an advantage over the competition in Seattle.

"We always want to attend to details and make good customer service the top priority of our daily work," said Zhou.

Hainan Airlines began offering free private limo service for business-class passengers starting July 1 in Seattle, Chicago and Boston. The airline already provides the service in Beijing.

During the first quarter of 2014, the number of Chinese air passengers traveling abroad rose 17 percent from a year earlier, according to the nation's aviation regulator, reaching 7.1 million people and accounted for nearly eight percent of all airline passengers.

The number of Chinese visitors coming to the US is expected to more than triple by 2020, according to CLSA research. More than 17 percent of experienced Chinese travelers ranked the US as their top vacation choice. For first time travelers, the US is the second-most popular vacation spot.

"We started this service in all three cities that have direct flights to Beijing," said Zhou. "There is a demand for such service. And as long as you meet the requirements and expectations of the customer, it works. The complimentary limo service will extend our high quality onboard services and make the five-star-journey complete."

Hainan Airlines was called Best Airline in China by Global Traveler magazine and a Five-Star Airline by global airline rating agency SKYTRAX.

"We wanted to establish Hainan Airlines — to distinguish ourselves from everyone else — as a full service-oriented company," Chen Feng, who founded Hainan Airlines in 1993, once said in an interview.

Hainan Airlines has more than 130 Boeing and Airbus aircraft with 600 domestic routes throughout China and international services to Europe, Russia, Southeast Asia and North America, linking 100 cities worldwide.