AirAsia Partners Flight Centre in Australia

Flight Centre Travel Group (FLT) has strengthened its preferred supplier network after signing a commercial agreement with the AirAsia Group.

The agreement is the airline's first in Australia and will see FLT and AirAsia work proactively together to promote the airline's fares, create new offerings for customers and grow the outbound travel market.

"AirAsia has a strong network and its key destinations - including Bali, Phuket, Kuala Lumpur and Krabi - are among the most popular holiday destinations for FLT's customers and Australian travellers in general," said Flight Centre Australia's Executive General Manager, Melanie Waters-Ryan. "In addition to gaining full access to the airline's offers, including special sales fares, we will look to create new and unique products and packages for our customers, which is a key global strategy for FLT."

The agreement follows recent talks in Australia with AirAsia’s senior management team, including AirAsia X acting CEO Benyamin Ismail and head of global sales and distribution Aboudy Nasser.

"AirAsia sees solid growth opportunities in Australia and is focussed on reinforcing the benefits of the strength of our network across Asia to over 100 destinations including Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, China, India," Mr Ismail said. "By working more closely with FLT, we can highlight our offerings to the company’s extensive customer database and proactively promote to travellers across all of the company's brands and sales channels, particularly its 1000 retail travel shops. This brand diversity is important because the traditional low cost carrier (LCC) model is evolving and gaining popularity among a broader customer base. While budget conscious travellers often look to LCCs, we are also seeing increased interest from other demographics, including those who are looking to save on the flight component of their holidays and spend more on accommodation."

The agreement will see FLT gain access to AirAsia's full product range via an application programming interface (API) into the Global Distribution System.

To celebrate the new agreement, special promo fares will be available from today (Friday, 5 June) as part of Flight Centre's Friday Flight Club.