How Kiwi.com is harnessing the power of APAC content

Taking advantage of ITB China, our Content Partnerships team expanded our portfolio

What do South Korea, China, Vietnam, Singapore and India have in common? Great air content! During May there was another edition of ITB China and the Content Partnerships team took the opportunity to expand Kiwi.com’s portfolio in the region.

Covering seven cities and five countries in two-and-a-half weeks was a challenge. Especially because we quickly noticed on our preparation calls that those markets, though geographically close, have nothing common.

Cultural differences can have a lot of impact on the most basic business rules. For example, due to the fact that OTAs were emerging and soon disappearing in Vietnam, the airlines now impose a ticketing quota upon weekly and monthly forecasting of sales.

Implementing a four-sided strategy

To ensure we receive only the best content from each market at Kiwi.com and from the best players, we decided to take a different approach. The first step was to gather feedback from our Business Development colleagues. Many of them are based in these markets and work closely with their travel agencies, OTAs and consolidators.

To those insights, we added the analysis of GDS. We asked our GDS account managers for the top two players in the markets we were interested in. These needed to be players with good content, strong financials, and operational teams that could provide Kiwi.com with the support we need.

With all these inputs and our knowledge of the challenges and cultural differences, such as aversion to risk, we prepared a four-sided strategy.

Making sure businesses grow together

In order to ensure we could quickly overcome language barriers, build initial trust and meet our potential partners needs for adjustment in some products, we scheduled meetings with the future partners, local GDS representatives, and our Business Development colleagues in other teams.

This joint approach proved very productive. Firstly, we were able to hold up to four meetings in a day and a half at each destination. More importantly, we were able to clarify business models and, in some cases, even agree on commercials on the spot.

Almost every meeting resulted in hot leads that are now proceeding to benchmark so we can prioritise the integrations.

We say prioritise and not evaluate because we already know we are partnering with the very best.

We also visited some of the current partnerships in place and discussed how we may leverage the content we receive from them even more. In this way, we make sure both businesses grow together.

Stay put! New and amazing APAC content will be available for you from Kiwi.com soon.

Time to make those plans to visit Asia…