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Charlot Zahra
Air Malta will be offering 8 per cent more seats in summer on a number of destinations including Italy and Germany, Air Malta chairman Lawrence Zammit said at the launch of the national airline’s web portal yesterday.
The web portal, which is situated at www.airmalta.com has a number of useful features including a booking engine which allows customers to choose their flights, as well as book accommodation, care hire and excess baggage.
The portal is in four languages – English, German, French and Italian – and is capable of recognising from which country the user is, thus enabling Air Malta to market country-specific offers.
In the first month that the new portal was online, there was a 24 per cent increase in the number of daily bookings from the Air Malta website.
In the future, the Air Malta portal will offer check-in through the Internet, e-Tendering, SMS notifications, and booking of restaurants, entertainment and tourist services.
E-ticketing will be introduced in a year’s time, thus doing away with the traditional tickets.
Air Malta chairman Lawrence Zammit said the launch of the new portal showed the company’s ability to restructure itself to adapt to the ever-changing market.
“Instead of depending on a travel agency, more people are using the Internet to book their holiday on their own. Therefore AirMalta had to overhaul its marketing strategy, and this portal is one of the steps in this direction,” Mr Zammit said.
Minister for Investments, Industry and IT Austin Gatt praised Air Malta’s transformation of its ICT systems. “In the past, Air Malta relegated the role of ICT; today it makes us proud,” he said.
He said that Air Malta has changed the way it uses ICT from a support role to a strategic role to make money.
Minister Gatt said Air Malta has made around 75 per cent of the cost-cutting measures possible as part of its restructuring plan. Now the company has to look at increasing its revenue. This portal is a step in the right direction, he said.
“If it weren’t for the fuel costs, Air Malta would be profitable,” concluded Gatt. |
