 "Jonathan Sinclair Neal, CEO, AAE Travel")
Jonathon Sinclair Neal recently took charge as CEO of AAE Travel - online travel company Expedia’s joint venture with Air Asia. On his maiden visit to India, Neal, in an interview with Arindam Majumder talks about the plans of making India strategic destination for the country and how the partnership with Air Asia helps the company. Edited excerpts:
What is the mandate for your new role?
The mandate is simple. It is to build the most locally viable and competitive business in the region. We have marked out India as a separate region on the lines of Japan, North East Asia and South East Asia. We have hired a new general manager for the country.
As Air Asia expands in India, how is the partnership going to help Expedia?
Air Asia brings a couple of critical parts. An US-based company like Expedia can be strong in technology but you still need to identify the behavioral trends of the local market. Air Asia has expanded across South East Asia. They have an extremely good understanding of the local market and an extremely large network. We see huge spike in enquiries when a new route is opened. By virtue of having a partnership, we are able to leverage their expertise.
Expedia has always trailed MakeMyTrip and Yatra in the Indian markets. What is the company doing to change this?
The India market is certainly competitive market. The other players have taken some steps but we are the only full service travel agent in the country. We feel at the moment we will play to our strength. We have the experience of running this business globally. We will bring in those practices and experiences to the Indian market.
Our customers are certainly different. They look for premium options and destinations like Scandinavia, Latin America. The trend among Indian customers is changing. They now look for certain off beat destination. We have better option and inventory in those places due to our global connection.
How is the company leveraging technology for growth?
While we look at Expedia’s success over the last few years, it has really been on the basis of technology. It is allowing us to accelerate the use of technology. Presently we use around US $850 million per in developing technology and use that in improving consumer experience of the Asian consumer. South East Asia is an under penetrated market and we see a huge scope in that.
