Thai AirAsia eliminates booking fees to lower fares

www.airasia.com

Thai AirAsia has announced that it is lowering its airfares by eliminating booking fees from its fare structure, in order to help it achieve its business objectives for 2009 and to help boost Thailand’s tourism industry.

Tassapon Bijleveld, the carrier’s CEO, said that the airline had polled passengers over the past few months about their travel requirements.

It noted that many customers indicated that they wanted to be able to travel but at more affordable prices.

In response to this finding, Thai AirAsia decided to waive booking fees, which amount to approximately Bt300 per passenger. This move, now in effect, relates to all bookings, and not just to those made online.

Early this year, Malaysian-based AirAsia became the world’s first carrier to eliminate fuel surcharges completely, as part of its strategy to increase its passenger numbers.

The carrier’s CEO said: “From now on, when customers open Thai AirAsia’s homepage to reserve tickets, they will see only the fare and airport tax, which we have to collect from our passengers and pass to the airport operators. This strategy is what we call ‘What You See Is What You Pay’.”

Bijleveld added: “It will be easier and more transparent than in the past. Taking both the fuel surcharge and ticket-booking fee, we’ve now waived about Bt1,000 per passenger per trip. This will make Thai AirAsia truly the lowest-cost airline in the world.”

Thanks to www.nationmultimedia.com for the above quotes, for more information on this article please visit their website.

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