In the news: Ascott’s strategic partnership with Alitrip, Chinese airlines end ties with Qunar, strong passenger growth for APAC carriers
Ascott expands reach in China through global portfolio listing on Alitrip
Ascott Heng Shan Shanghai, a listing on Alitrip. (Image credit: Ascott)
The Ascott Ltd, wholly owned serviced residence business unit of Singapore based CapitaLand, has deepened its access to over 100 million Chinese travellers through listing its global network of apartments on Alitrip.
Ascott said its latest move was spurred by the shift of Chinese tourists towards independent travel. It is also a first for any serviced residence company to have its entire property portfolio listed on Alitrip, the online travel service platform under the Chinese e-commerce giant, Alibaba Group.
Ascott already has 24 of its China properties with 4,300 apartment units available for booking by Alitrip users through a directly operated online flagship store. It will list its global network of more than 26,000 apartment units operating in over 60 cities on the one-stop online travel platform by June this year.
Lee Chee Koon, Ascott’s chief executive officer, said rising incomes in China are driving domestic travel and making it the world’s biggest outbound travel market that are potential customers for Ascott.
“Chinese are amongst Ascott’s top customers at our properties globally with revenue surging by 36% year-on-year.”
Kevin Goh, Ascott’s managing director for North Asia added that since opening Ascott’s online store with its properties on Alitrip in August 2015 the company has seen high traffic and strong sales.
“Customers who have booked their stays with Ascott through Alitrip can now use the ‘Post Post Pay’ service at our properties in China. Qualified guests will be able to reserve apartments without paying a deposit and can enjoy express check-out by having payments automatically deducted from their Alipay accounts. The ‘Post Post Pay’ service will also be available for our global properties by this year.”
China is now Ascott’s largest market with the most number of properties. It is also the largest international serviced residence owner-operator in China with over 14,000 apartment units across 24 Chinese cities.
The latest partnership with Alitrip comes on the back of Ascott’s recent collaborations with various online and technology leaders. In August 2015, Ascott invested in Tujia.com International to harness growth opportunities in the O2O (Offline-to-Online and Online-to-Offline) space. In April 2015, Ascott was the first global serviced residence company to embrace Internet of Things-ready smart serviced residences in collaboration with Samsung Asia Pte Ltd.
China Southern and Hainan Airlines cut ties with Qunar
China Southern, one of the airlines that ends ties with Qunar.
This story is reproduced courtesy of ChinaTravelNews/ Xianhao Zeng
On the last day of 2015 China’s tourism industry was struck by the shocking announcements that China Southern Airlines and Hainan Airlines are terminating their flagship store partnerships with leading OTA Qunar.
Industry observers are calling this the Chinese tourism industry’s final battle of 2015, which will likely rage on into 2016.
Even more serious is the fact that China Southern and Hainan Airlines are not the only Chinese carriers itching for a fight with Qunar, as Capital Airlines also closed its flagship store on Qunar citing similar reasons as the two major carriers in a public notice.
One airline source has told ChinaTravelNews that Qunar has recently been breaking regulations at an alarming rate, which has led to a flood of customer complaints.
“The carriers have decided to cut ties once and for all with Qunar because the high number of user complaints, from extra charges to refunds and ticket change issues, has already passed the point of endurance.”
Both carriers have issued statements on the reasons for cutting ties with Qunar.
Qunar has fired back with a post on its Wechat account stating: “Qunar has temporarily ceased the flagship store partnership with China Southern Airlines and Hainan Airlines as a result of disagreements over the ticket display order.”
In its Wechat rebuttal Qunar added: “Recently China Southern and Hainan Airlines have insisted that we change the order of ticket display on our website from an order by price to a chronological order. However, we think that displaying tickets by the order of their prices is more suited to the typical booking search habits of our users and so we are sticking to our ‘customer first’ values. As a result, we are ceasing our flagship store partnership for the time being but users can continue to purchase China Southern and Hainan Airlines tickets on our site”
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Strong passenger growth for APAC airlines
November 2015 a good month for APAC airlines.
Airlines in the Asia Pacific region reported robust growth in international air passenger demand for November 2015 according to preliminary traffic figures released by the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA).
A combined total of 22.5 million international passengers were carried by the region’s airlines in the month reviewed, a 6.7% increase compared to the same month in 2014.
Measured in revenue passenger kilometres (RPK), demand grew by a healthy 8.7%, on the back of robust leisure travel markets, said AAPA.
The average international passenger load factor strengthened by 2.1% points to 76.8% for the month, after accounting for a 5.7% expansion in available seat capacity.
Andrew Herdman, AAPA director general, said demand remained strong in spite of the overall weakness in Asian currencies, and the moderation in emerging market economies.
“Air passenger markets continued to record strong growth in November. For the eleven month period of January to November 2015, Asian airlines carried a total of 252 million international passengers, representing growth of 8.1%.”
He added the strong air passenger demand was due to affordable low airfares resulting from persistently low oil prices.
“Overall, the region’s airlines are focused on responding appropriately to evolving patterns of market demand, whilst making efforts to increase operational efficiency and boost profitability.”
• Featured image credit (map of China): gualbertobecerra/iStock
