The airline that made flying more affordable for Malaysians since 2001 is now looking to up its game by using big data analytics to mine data on 80 million unique passengers at its disposal, to personalise and anticipate travelling patterns for marketing purposes.
“We have a database of about 80 million unique individuals. We know where they like to fly to, or when they like to fly during the year, or how many holidays they take maybe during the year.
“Now, the marketing side has already started employing data analytics there, to actually start targeting certain portions of passengers on specific dates or specific periods of the year that they go on holiday,” AirAsia Bhd CEO Riad Asmat told last week.
“We can be more specific and will go further, not now but at one point, where maybe we can offer you as an individual, your preferred destination on the right date … and say we will give you a nice package at a discounted rate and all that,” he added.
On data protection, Riad gave an assurance that the data trove is one of its most important assets which, as a “very responsible organisation”, the company is very protective of at all times and use responsibly.
“We don’t share our information with any other parties but ourselves. If you notice what we are doing is we bring expertise inhouse. We employ people and bring in expertise,” he explained.
Riad said while the airline is utilising its current resources, it is also on a continuous lookout for expertise and new technology.
Besides marketing and ticket purchases, digitalisation has enabled AirAsia to improve operational efficiency, through the use of data in features such as live reporting and operations review from the previous day, made available to the team on a daily basis.
This, according to Riad, enables the team to identify and tackle challenges and come up with preventive measures.
“The airline bit is the traditional bit but it will be 100 times enhanced with digitalisation,” he quipped.