She describes herself as ‘disruptive’, and wants her company to do exactly that in the Indian travel market. Kathleen Tan, a trusted lieutenant of another famously disruptive entrepreneur – Malaysian budget airline AirAsia’s promoter Tony Fernandes — was a member of AirAsia’s leadership team for nine years, responsible for topline performance and overseeing as many as 15 departments.

This January, she was appointed Chief Executive Officer of AirAsia Expedia, a 50:50 joint venture between AirAsia and online travel portal Expedia.

Business Line met Kathleen Tan to get her views on the Indian travel market, her strategy for selling AirAsia in India, and her plan to double the headcount in Indian operations to 600 in a year or so. Excerpts:

You took over AirAsia Expedia at a time when AirAsia is preparing to launch its joint airline venture in India. What is your view on the Indian market?

My role as the new CEO is to build and grow the Expedia brand in Asia, and India is a priority for me. I see more people travelling to South-East Asia, so we can tap from our market to bring more people coming into India. Expedia sells large number of hotels. We have a lot of inventory. We have over 400 airlines and 200,000 hotels globally. We want to become the preferred choice of Indian travellers planning to book overseas. We have 18,000 deals every day to fly or book hotels anywhere.

The perception is that foreign brands are very expensive, that is not true. We also have domestic hotels in India. We want to localise the brand, bring more local content, so that we can connect more people.

What will be the specific strategy for India?

Localisation. Not a foreign brand, where you do translation. The strategy is we want more Asians to book on Expedia. It has a unique competitive edge. It is a one-stop shopping portal -- you have flights, hotels, tours and cars. In each local Asian city, we want to have a deeper campaign. We have a mobile app and it is getting improved.

You said you have 280,000 people following you on the Facebook. How many of them do you hope to convert into actual users? What are the growth numbers you are looking at?

We are seeing double-digit growth on our Web site. In India, people do not mind booking hotels on standalone basis -- we saw triple digit growth in standalone hotel bookings in the last few months. Now the trend is shifting. Indian people are becoming more confident. We see people coming to our Web site to buy packages. So, we are changing people's behaviour. The best thing on our Web site is that we have low-cost inventory due to our joint venture. We can get AirAsia’s lowest fare that you see on AirAsia Web site. I come from AirAsia, so I am the person in charge for giving low fare for the entire group. Coming from Air Asia, we do things differently. In fact, in Japan, we just did a ‘One Yen’ deal. It was a two-day campaign and was driving everyone mad. We are disruptors, I am the disruptor and I am going to do things which nobody has ever done.

For example, in India, people are just marketing mostly Bangkok, Phukhet, Singapore. Everyone is doing the same. I want to market Bali, Lombok (Indonesia), Saba (Netherland), Krabi (Thailand) and cities like that. We know so much about travel. We are contracting teams in Thailand, Japan and Indonesia. I am challenging my team to do something which no one has done.

But here, the problem is that AirAsia is currently not connected to two key cities, Delhi and Mumbai.

I do not sell AirAsia only. We have so many airlines. We sell many low-cost airlines

Any new scheme for the Indian market?

Just wait. We launched 10,000 free rooms scheme and it was very successful. Throughout the summer, you will see lot of such market disruptive schemes.

Is there a strategy planned for when AirAsia’s new venture starts flying?

Yes there will be, as Expedia will have exclusive content about it. Once the plan (of AirAsia) is finalised, we will be the first to know. We also want to bring in another portal called AirAsiaGo. So, you will have two brands for two different classes of people.

Under the current regulation, AirAsia’s new venture in India will have to wait for five years to fly abroad. So, don’t you think providing cheaper international travel package will be difficult, going by the domestic fare scenario?

AirAsia has lot of surprises and India is just going to see them. First when you will have new players, fares are bound to come down in the domestic market. Secondly, though I cannot say, but who knows whether in five years, the regulation is going to remain there or change.

>shishir.sinha@thehindu.co.in

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