AirAsia to become a travel technology company
LONDON: AirAsia Bhd is integrating Google Cloud’s machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies into every aspect of its business, as part of its transformation into a travel technology company.
Speaking at the Google Cloud Next London ‘18 event, AirAsia group chief executive officer Tan Sri Tony Fernandes said: “It’s a huge mission, but we’ve never done anything easy. We are now in our next phase of development where we are expanding beyond air transport, and digitalising our operations and processes to become more efficient.”
Google Cloud will allow AirAsia to make full use of the mountain of data it already owns, opening up opportunities for the carrier to build new businesses.
“We have a huge amount of data we’ve collected over the last 17 years. We kept everything, even our own magazines,” said Fernandes at ExCel London.
AirAsia is building two big platforms – airasia.com, its one-stop digital travel platform to meet the travel needs of customers for flight, accommodation, tours, ground transport and entertainment; and BigLife, which it claims will be “like Kayak, Tripadvisor, Groupon and ebay rolled into one”.
“BigLife will incorporate all the investments under our digital arm Redbeat Ventures, such as our money app BigPay, in-flight connectivity platform Rokki, online marketplace Ourshop and logistics services RedBox and RedCargo.
“Both platforms will help drive more business into AirAsia with the help of data,” he said.
According to Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene, AirAsia started using Google’s services with G Suite to transform the way the company works.
“Now, with our advanced analytics platform and machine learning services, AirAsia will be able to digitise every aspect of its business to better serve its customers,” she added.
AirAsia also hopes to use Google Cloud to maximise operational efficiency and reduce risk through predictive maintenance, real-time weather forecasting and crew optimisation.
On top of that, it aimed to improve demand forecasting and targeted marketing and provide more personalised experiences to increase customer loyalty.
AirAsia will also be able to enrol its technical teams in the same programme Google Cloud uses to train its engineers, allowing the airline to build its own internal machine learning system.