Vaccine rollout speeds up world travel recovery
AirAsia welcomes news of Covid-19 vaccines being rolled out across Malaysia commencing from this week, as the first key indicator of a global travel reboot in the near future.
AirAsia’s key international markets are also progressing well with the vaccination program, including Indonesia, Singapore, China and Australia, while other regional countries such as Thailand and the Philippines are scheduled to begin their vaccination program by the first quarter of this year.
“After a year of uncertainty, it’s great to see that this extremely challenging chapter is finally coming to a close. AirAsia has spent the travel downtime period to put in place rigorous digital initiatives and innovative technologies that would make air travel even safer and more seamless post-Covid-19. Better testing, leisure travel bubbles, anti veil medicines and importantly, digital health passports providing a single tool for health records across Asean and beyond, are also coming soon, to support the global travel recovery,” AirAsia Group CEO Tony Fernandes said.
“I am confident that AirAsia will recover faster than many due to our low cost model, position in the market and the fast-tracking of our digital transformation to become Asia’s leading travel and lifestyle superapp, which has helped to mitigate adverse effects from the pandemic,” he added.
“We have been through our fair share of crises in the past including starting out just after 9/11, SARS bird flu epidemics, tsunamis and earthquakes to name a few, but Covid-19 has by far, posed the most challenging situation we have ever experienced.”
Fernandes also stressed that after a year of strict cost containment including exiting Japan and reducing their stake in India, there is finally light at the end of the very long tunnel.
“I remain optimistic we will achieve our fundraising target of RM2.5 billion. The first tranche of the private placement of up to 20 percent of the total issued shares of AirAsia Group Berhad’s was completed last week, with 11.07 percent placed out, raising a total of RM250 million. This clearly reflects the solid market and investors confidence in the company,” he said.
“We are working towards obtaining approval for the loan under the Danajamin PRIHATIN Guarantee Scheme within the next month. Concurrently, we have positive ongoing discussions for other fundraising support measures in many of our key markets such as Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines which we will announce in due course. Other capital raising and financial support measures are being considered, including capital raising for our digital entities. We expect further clarity to be reached on all funding efforts by the end of March.”
“Through all of this, I am honored to have led our incredibly resilient Allstars through what has been the most difficult of times and now I’m so excited to lead them through the recovery as we reinvent ourselves as the travel, tech and lifestyle super app of choice for Asia. We can look forward to a gradual recovery in 2021 in all of our key markets and potentially a full recovery within the next two years,” he added.