THAILAND. Thai AirAsia will launch an inflight duty free service next Monday.
“We want to keep customer satisfaction by adding new services and this will also differentiate us from competitors,” CEO Tassapon Bijleveld told The Nation.
Earlier this year parent airline AirAsia appointed Inflight Sales Group (ISG) as its supplier and concessionaire.
The report said that Chanel luxury items will be offered, along with 50-60 product categories, including perfume, souvenirs, women’s accessories and gifts – but no liquor or cigarettes.
However, the newspaper’s claim that the range would be priced on average -20% lower than other inflight duty free and Thailand’s airport shops, was an error.
Colin Gibson, General Manager of ISG Light HK, the operator of Thai AirAsia’s and AirAsia’s inflight duty free programmes, told The Moodie Report: “The goods sold on Thai AirAsia and AirAsia are priced at the manufacturer’s recommended airline retail prices applicable in the region. While these are generally below airport shop prices, it is certainly not the policy of the programme to price merchandise below the manufacturer’s recommended levels. It is our policy to offer passengers the best value price for all merchandise sold through our programmes, but it is not our policy to violate pricing norms in the region.”
ISG sees considerable potential in AirAsia and Thai AirAsia and Gibson has underlined that conviction by relocating to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Thai AirAsia flies from Bangkok to Singapore, Macau and Kota Kinabalu in Malaysia. By the end of this year, it will add one more daily flight to Macau and Kota Kinabalu and a new route from Bangkok to Sudan in Malaysia.
It said it carries 100,000 passengers a month and is on target to reach one-million passengers in its first year of operations, despite the arrival of Singapore’s budget entry Tiger Airways.
Tiger Airways, which is offering a one-way promotional fare of Bt25 from Singapore to Bangkok, would bring about change to the Thai airline industry, Tassapon added.
BACKGROUND ON AIRASIA: Click here for an interview with Bruce Musick, Chief Executive Officer of CrunchTime Culinary Services, Air Asia’s commercial arm.
