Budget airlines go for social media over traditional advertising

An article in this weekend’s New Zealand Herald reporting from an Asia Pacific conference for low cost airlines showed that Asian budget carriers are increasingly using social networks like Facebook to boost their business and even channel customer criticism, without resorting to print advertising. They point to both lowering costs and increasing customer engagement:

"What I have seen in terms of marketing budgets over the last few years is we spent almost nothing now on print," Tony Davis from Tiger Airways said.

Azran Osman-Rani, chief executive of Malaysia's long-haul budget airline AirAsia X, said social media served as an interactive medium between passengers and carriers.

"Once you have got a sufficient size, you got to realise you have to keep customers coming back to you," he said at the same conference.

"You've got to be able to engage with them and there is only so much communication you can do with just putting ads in the newspapers," Azran said.

"People today are expecting a dialogue and it's incredible how much more loyalty you can build, even with customers that are upset with you when you give them a channel to air their grievances."

Cebu Pacific, a Philippine low-cost carrier, said it has enjoyed significant success on Facebook.

"Facebook is one of the social media channels that we use a lot," said the airline's chief executive adviser Garry Kingshott.

"We have our own fan page but we actually have people create other fan pages - Cebu Pacific fan pages that have even got bigger."

This latter point is really important as fans that are loyal to the brand can spawn other layers of engagement helping to make the communication viral. This provides even more points of contact with a wider audience, and the opportunity to convert these fans into customers.

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