SIA and Alibaba Group set up collaboration

Singapore Airlines (SIA) and Alibaba Group have announced a comprehensive strategic collaboration including Fliggy, Alibaba Cloud, Alipay and Cainiao Network. The collaboration with these players in Alibaba Group’s ecosystem aim to enhance the customer experience. This will harness the transformative potential of technology extending across a number of areas. These include flight ticket sales, loyalty programmes, marketing initiatives, cloud services, payments and logistics.

How does the Alibaba Group tie-up benefit travellers? 

The tie-up between SIA and Alibaba Group will be beneficial to customers of both groups. Over 600 million monthly active mobile users on Alibaba’s China retail marketplaces will unlock new benefits across the retail and travel value chains. This is significant in one of the world’s fastest growing travel markets.

The tie-up extends the partnership between SIA and Alibaba Group’s affiliate, Alipay, introduced as a payment option on SIA’s website in 2013. In 2016, Alibaba’s travel service platform, Alitrip launched an official SIA flagship store for direct purchase of SIA flight tickets by consumers in China. Alitrip has since been rebranded “Fliggy”.

Benefits will be rolled out in stages, beginning later in 2018.

These benefits include:

• two-way points conversion for KrisFlyer and Fliggy members
• access to membership perks from both loyalty programmes
• KrisFlyer members can convert their KrisFlyer miles to Fliggy points
• Fliggy members will be able to convert their Fliggy points to KrisFlyer miles

SIA and Fliggy will explore further opportunities to sync their respective loyalty programmes and drive cross-promotion of membership services.

In addition,

• eligible Fliggy members will be able to earn KrisFlyer Elite Silver or Gold status.
• accompanying privileges could include
  • tier bonuses on actual miles flown
  • priority reservation waitlist
  • seat selection privileges
  • priority baggage handling

Fliggy members with KrisFlyer Elite Gold status can receive benefits across the Star Alliance network, the world’s largest airline alliance.

In addition, the collaboration seeks to extend Alipay acceptance beyond flight purchases to also cover in-flight products and services, airport services, retail merchandise and ancillary touchpoints.