AirAsia wants to reinvent itself as an OTA

Tuesday, 09 Apr, 2019 0

Budget airline group AirAsia is mulling selling other airline’s tickets on its website as it targets becoming an end-to-end travel platform.

AirAsia.com already offers a range of travel related services bundled with its own flights like hotels and car rentals, and believes it has the big data to do a better job than the big online travel agency players.

With 65 million monthly users, group CEO Tony Fernandes says it has the customer data traction to compete with the top players.

"I have a phenomenally strong platform that I [can] open for business to sell other content," Fernandes told the South China Morning Post.

"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 has often described itself more as a travel technology group rather than one solely restricted to aviation.

It has a head start in the customer journey as travellers invariably search and book air tickets first.

"We are going to see the customer first, so we are going to take a large share of the wallet and we’re going to be good at it. The first step would be to be as good as anyone selling hotels, selling activities," Fernandes said.

"Then we may start selling airlines which don’t compete with us."

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TravelMole Editorial Team

Editor for TravelMole North America and Asia pacific regions. Ray is a highly experienced (15+ years) skilled journalist and editor predominantly in travel, hospitality and lifestyle working with a huge number of major market-leading brands. He has also cover in-depth news, interviews and features in general business, finance, tech and geopolitical issues for a select few major news outlets and publishers.

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