On the evening of 19 October, Ms. Celia Lao, General Manager of Greater China, AirAsia Digital, visited the University of Macau and gave the students in the Department of Integrated Resort and Tourism Management a guest lecture titled “AirAsia’s Digital Transformation Journey”. She discussed the various stages of AirAsia’s digital transformation, such as the founding of the airline, the growth of the guest database, the spread of social media platforms, and the creation of a digital lifestyle platform.
Celia Lao joined AirAsia as Country Head – Greater China, and became the airline’s very first employee in that region in 2004. She is currently responsible for developing and expanding AirAsia’s digital business in Greater China. She works closely with the leadership team of the portfolio companies of AirAsia Digital and lead the team in Greater China to develop and expand all digital related businesses in the region.
E-Commerce relies on the Internet, and it has expanded quickly across the globe due to the acceptance of Internet technology and the incorporation of various “Internet+” policies. It has substantially streamlined consumers’ purchasing experiences due to its effective information exchange, real-time delivery and other characteristics, and numerous industries have joined the ranks of e-commerce. On the one hand, the development of e-commerce has cultivated new consumption habits among consumers motivated some companies to transfer part of their business to the emerging e-commerce platform.
Ms. Celia further shared that the rapid growth of AirAsia’s rapid growth in just over a decade is beneficial from the young leadership team’s innovative business thinking and the early accumulation of customer history archives, which laid the foundation of customer base and social media influence for the company’s rapid development in the later period. The ASEAN super app has been embraced by AirAsia as the primary breakthrough in the Group’s digital transformation journey. And the group is committed to offering customer flights, hotels, packages, activities, transports and much more products and services via a one-stop travel, e-commerce and fin-tech platform. In the end, Ms. Celia also patiently answered students’ questions about the details of AirAsia’s diversified and digital development path mentioned in the lecture.
After the lecture, Christine Lim, Associate Professor of the Department of Integrated Resort and Tourism Management, presented the certificate to Ms. Celia and invited the students to take a group photo. Ms. Celia demonstrated the existing achievements of AirAsia’s digital transformation and lifestyle platform development from various perspectives in this lecture, and the students learned a lot and deepened their understanding of the applications of e-commerce in the current tourism industry.
