Exclusive | Southeast Asia’s biggest budget carrier plans to turn airasia.com into online mall for travellers
- Airasia.com boasts 65 million unique monthly visitors
- Tourism revenue is projected to rise by 53 per cent to US$625 billion in Asia in the next five years, according to PATA
AirAsia, whose website is used by 65 million customers every month, is considering a plan to sell tickets of non-competing carriers on airasia.com, using its size to give online travel agents a run for their money.
The Kuala Lumpur-based carrier, Southeast Asia’s largest airline group, which already sells car rentals, accommodation at half a million hotels and serviced apartments worldwide and holiday packages in five regional destinations, thinks it can do a better job of selling these services than the travel industry because of the volume of data available from frequent travellers on its network.
“I have a phenomenally strong platform that I [can] open for business to sell other content,” Tony Fernandes, AirAsia’s founder and chief executive, said in an interview with the South China Morning Post during Credit Suisse’s Asia Investment Conference in Hong Kong. “We can be as strong as any online travel agent in terms of selling hotel content. I think we can be stronger than Klook at selling activities.”
The airline, which prefers to be seen and heard as part of a wider travel technology group, is leveraging data to know its customers better and keep them spending in its ecosystem.
