Eastar Jet to sell tickets on Alibaba's travel platform Fliggy

Eastar Jet will partner with Fliggy, Alibaba Group's leading travel platform, to boost demand from Chinese travelers visiting South Korea and revitalize regional tourism.

Fliggy is China's largest online travel platform, offering a vast lineup of products that includes about 1.5 million hotels worldwide, 25,000 flight routes and 8,000 tourist attraction tickets. The platform has more than 500 million members, including about 60 million membership subscribers.

On Thursday, Eastar Jet signed a memorandum of understanding with Fliggy at Fliggy's headquarters in Hangzhou, China, aimed at attracting Chinese travelers to Korea and strengthening joint marketing. Eastar Jet CEO Cho Jung-suk, Commercial Division Head Lee Kyung-min and Fliggy CEO Li Chen attended the signing.

The two companies agreed to cooperate across several areas, including expanding sales of flight tickets from China to Korea, launching joint promotions to generate demand for regional tourism, and promoting Eastar Jet's brand along with Korean travel content.

In particular, Eastar Jet plans to supply Fliggy with tickets for routes connecting China with major South Korean regions -- including Incheon, Jeju, Busan, Cheongju and Daegu -- to improve accessibility for Chinese travelers and help spread demand for visits to Korea beyond the greater Seoul area and into the regions.

Drawing on its roughly 500 million members, Fliggy plans to promote Eastar Jet's brand and introduce region-specific Korean tourism content through channels tailored to the Chinese market, such as livestream commerce and influencer marketing.

Eastar Jet has been expanding its China routes while continuing efforts to attract more inbound passengers on those routes. In April, the airline signed an MOU with the Korea Tourism Organization on attracting travelers from Chinese-speaking regions and revitalizing regional tourism, and it has also been expanding its sales and marketing channels in China.

In practice, the number of foreign passengers on Eastar Jet's China routes has been rising consistently. From January to August this year, the number of foreign passengers grew 204 percent from the same period last year. Foreigners accounted for 70.1 percent of all passengers. Demand from inbound travelers on regional routes has also been expanding -- the Jeju-Shanghai route, in particular, saw an average foreign passenger share of 98 percent.

"We expect this partnership with Fliggy, China's largest travel platform, to expand our points of contact with customers in China," an Eastar Jet official said. "We will continue to expand cooperation with local partners in China to consistently generate demand for Chinese visitors to Korea, and contribute to tourism exchange between Korea and China and the revitalization of regional tourism."

Meanwhile, Eastar Jet has been carrying out various marketing initiatives to improve passenger convenience, including introducing a baggage-opening inspection notification service with the Korea Airports Corporation for domestic flights at Gimpo, Jeju, Cheongju, Gimhae and Daegu airports.