vision2035

Brunei: RB reaching new heights

THE national carrier of Brunei Darussalam, Royal Brunei Airlines (RB) has made a number of significant developments recently, with further advancements on the horizon, including the addition of eight new aircraft to its fleet.

One such development was the launch of an enhanced Royal Brunei Holidays (RBH) website on September 27, which encompasses 24/7 online dynamic planning and bundling of holiday products.

Designed to be user-friendly on all devices, the website enables RB’s online guests to plan and purchase entire holiday products – including flights, accommodation, tours and transport in Brunei and RB destinations – in one convenient place, along with instant confirmation, eliminating the hassle of going through too many websites to plan and book their holiday needs.

The enhanced website provides users with a great variety of choices for their holidays within the RB network. With the ease of searching for the hotels, tours and transfers and making the bookings on one website, RB plans to enrich customer experience, while being in a position to send personalised offerings to each of the guests. In addition, RB is also seeking to promote awareness of what Brunei has to offer by making as many Brunei hotels, tours and transfers available online.

“The refreshed and powerful Royal Brunei Holidays is a great platform to showcase all our destinations and offerings to Bruneians and expats living in Brunei, and provide them with opportunities to get real value for money deals,” said Karam Chand, the CEO of RB, during the launch.

“This digital platform allows us to create greater awareness, and help market Brunei as a tourist destination. Many of our local business partners such as hoteliers will have the opportunity to distribute their products globally, 24/7.”

“With the ease of distributing and booking tickets, hotels and tours in Brunei, we are very positive that the new Online Holidays platform will assist in boosting tourism to Brunei, and help us to reach the visitor arrival objective of 451,000 tourists by 2020.”

During the development of its new RBH website, RB received support and input from major stakeholders such as Brunei Tourism Board, tour operators, hoteliers and its technology partners, Cozmo and Amadeus.

The RB CEO also shared on the sidelines of the launch that the airline will be adding eight new aircraft to its fleet, comprising seven A320 neo aircraft and one 787 Boeing aircraft.

“The aircraft will be delivered starting April next year with the last one expected to be handed over in October. It is a huge development for us. It is a positive one for RB and for the nation as well, and provides more options for us to increase our flight network,” he said.

“The idea is to get brand-new products that will improve customers’ experience and for RB to improve their departure and arrival times. We provide 70 per cent seat capacity between Brunei Darussalam and the rest of the world. As a national carrier, it is important for us to deliver reliable products. Our reliability is the best in the world already.”

He added that new routes to cities in India are also being looked into. “North Asia, China and India are big markets for us and it’s not surprising that we are looking into it as there is a growing middle class in these regions and more people are travelling.”

“We are already flying to three high-population cities in Indonesia. So don’t be surprised if we eventually fly to India. We haven’t made our decision yet and we are closely looking at all the issues. In the airline industry, there are multiple issues to be looked at such as revenue, cost, ground handling, maintenance, and so on. We have to do our research,” Chand said.

“We recently launched flights to Beijing which has been encouraging and we are continuing to pursue chartered opportunities. Our goal is to connect to as many capital cities as we can which will help (the country) in trade, commerce and tourism,” added the CEO. A memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed on September 15 between RB and Beijing Dachengxingye Investing Management Co (BDIM), which will allow RB to resume direct flights to Beijing by December 2017.

Signed on the sidelines of the China-Asean Expo (CAEXPO) in Nanning, the MoU records the cooperation between RB and BDIM on RB’s Beijing route, where BDIM will collaborate with RB over the next three years to develop the Beijing market and tourism flows to Brunei Darussalam.

Meanwhile, in August RB boosted its commitment to environmental protection by partnering with a talented French start-up which provides a 360° solution to reduce fuel costs and CO2 emissions of airlines. Under this agreement, RB will use OpenAirlines’ flagship software SkyBreathe Fuel Efficiency.

Implementation of the software system has begun and will continuously monitor fuel consumption of each flight operated by the airline to identify the most relevant fuel saving opportunities using sophisticated, innovative algorithms and taking into account actual flight conditions.

According to a press release, the SkyBreathe solution, which leverages years of advanced research in trajectory optimisation and Big Data analysis, will offer comprehensive analytics through 500 plus easy to use predefined reports allowing for accurate monitoring of each fuel-saving initiative and will then provide clear results for key stakeholders, project team, and pilots via unique dashboards. The innovative OpenAirlines Fuel Efficiency software is already assisting 22 airlines and operators across the world to save two to four per cent on fuel consumption.

“We are pleased to collaborate with OpenAirlines, which have already, through their success, demonstrated their ability to deliver on the promise of superior fuel savings.

We are committed to adopting fuel best practices across the airline’s business to further improve our fuel-efficient operations,” said Zlatko Sirac, Executive General Manager – Operations at RB.

This year has also seen RB sign and enhance a number of code share agreements. In July, RB signed a codeshare agreement with Philippine Airlines (PAL), which provides RB and PAL guests more options while traveling on business or leisure between three key destinations in Asean.

RB also enhanced its codeshare agreement with Malaysia Airlines in March, allowing travellers from both countries to purchase their flights to other cities in Peninsular Malaysia, such as Langkawi, Penang, Alor Star, Kota Bahru, Johor Bahru.

RB and Turkish Airlines began their code share agreement in February 2016 that allows passengers to connect seamlessly from Bandar Seri Begawan to Istanbul via Dubai (and vice versa). According to a press release, both airlines are pleased with the results and announced plans to further enhance this connectivity via Singapore. Effective May 1, flights from Singapore to Istanbul (and vice versa) will be operated by Turkish Airlines whereas the flight between Bandar Seri Begawan and Singapore will be operated by Royal Brunei Airlines.

This year has also seen RB introduce mobile boarding passes. Effective April 3, the mobile boarding passes were made available upon a successful mobile check-in from passengers’ own personal handheld devices. The mobile boarding pass initiative aims to encourage paperless travel by having travel documents all in one personal hand held device.

Source: http://borneobulletin.com.bn/rb-reaching-new-heights/