Acting Group CEO Speaks
A leading corporate leader with strong financial background and extensive experience in various fields , he is currently steering Malaysia Airports to greater heights. This month, Raja Azmi Raja Nazuddin shares his joy as two of its Malaysian airports have been shortlisted for the Routes Asia 2019 Marketing Awards and the memorable signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Tourism Malaysia for the Joint International Tourism Development Programme (JITDP).
It was a very happy and joyous day for us at Malaysia Airports when we were informed our flagship Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) and Langkawi International Airport (LIA) are among the 21 airports and destinations shortlisted for the Routes Asia 2019 Marketing Awards.
KLIA, which turns 21 in June, has been shortlisted once again this year for the ‘Over 20 million passengers’ category. Last year, it not only emerged as the winner under this category but was also selected as the overall winner in this highly regarded regional heat that was held in Brisbane, Australia.
It will be a tall order for us to maintain our position but with our solid airline marketing team’s effort and the management working hands in glove with them and the other key tourism related industry players, I believe we can be a strong contender against the other nominated candidates.
KLIA’s main terminal registered 28.1 million passengers in 2018. Taking into account klia2’s performance as well, the figure totalled 60 million passengers, up 2.4% against the previous year. To support our traffic growth, we have put infrastructure improvement and digitalisation acceleration policies as part of our 2019 business plan.
Following the commercial reset at KLIA which started last year, we are now extending it to klia2 and other international airports like in Langkawi, where we hosted the ACI Asia-Pacific Small and Emerging Airports Seminar 2018 last October. The delegates were able to see our expansion plans for LIA after our year-long expansion exercise.
LIA, which has been shortlisted in the ‘Under four million passengers’ category for Routes Asia 2019 Marketing Awards, is now capable of handling four million passengers a year. It registered 2.74 million passenger traffic movements in 2018 with 29.9% increase in international passengers.
Overall, we are expecting more increase in scheduled frequencies and the launch of more new routes this year by the airlines operating at our airports. For the recent Chinese New Year period alone, we had approved around 120 slots for charter and additional scheduled flights coming to our international airports in Kuala Lumpur, Kota Kinabalu, Penang, Kuching and Langkawi.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank our airline network planning community for recognising our marketing support and for voting us to be among the crème de la crème of the aviation industry.
We have put into place several initiatives to enhance route development at our airports and strengthen Malaysia’s position as a hub. As we signed our MoU with Tourism Malaysia for the JITDP this year following its successful introduction last year, we envisaged that it will benefit the airlines and other related players promoting inbound tourism.
We encourage them to tap into this combined fund of up to RM20 million for their marketing development purposes. So far, 10 airline companies have benefitted from JITDP programme. With our Malaysian aviation sector generating about 3.3% of the country’s gross domestic product and creating over 460,000 jobs, we are eager to witness tremendous opportunities for growth to be enjoyed by all.
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