An online travel agency that recently entered the Australian market has responded to being ditched by an airline which claims it has “not acted in good faith”.
Traveloka launched Down Under last week to support 20 million foreign tourist visits to Indonesia.
However, the OTA suffered a major setback earlier shortly after announcing its local expansion, with AirAsia permanently withdrawing sales of its flights from the platform.
The withdrawal covers all flight routes across the AirAsia network, and is in response to the unexplained disappearance of AirAsia Indonesia flights from Traveloka for the second time in the past two weeks, according to the airline.
AirAsia Indonesia president Dendy Kurniawan said the exclusion of several the airline’s flights by Traveloka was a clear display of preferential treatment and an act of favouritism.
“Traveloka has not acted in good faith. They have refused to provide an official explanation despite our repeated attempts to seek their clarification,” he said.
In response to AirAsia’s accusations, Traveloka told Travel Weekly it prioritises sustainable partnerships with all stakeholders, including business partners.
“Therefore, Traveloka regrets the decision made by one of our flight partners, AirAsia, to withdraw the ticket sales from our platform,” the company’s PR director, Sufintri Rahayu, said.
“As part of our commitment to provide the best services to our customers, we are striving to ensure our customers to have the best travel and lifestyle experience in accessing an array of airlines that have been available.
“At the same time, we have reached out to our partner since this weekend to open a dialogue that will provide the best solutions for all relevant parties.”
