Continuing its super-isation drive, AirAsia has officially introduced yet another service into its “super app” ecosystem although this particular offering is currently limited to AirAsia’s mobile app. Called airasia Chat, you can now communicate in real-time with other AirAsia app users, and connect with like-minded communities, as well as discover places to stay, eat, and play.
There are several main features within the new airasia Chat. Firstly, you can join the community chat rooms based on topics that interest you. You can also use channels to get the latest updates on AirAsia promotions, news, and more.
Among the top community chat rooms are Kuala Lumpur Travellers and Bali Travellers, while not surprisingly, the airasia.com promotion has the highest number of followers in the Channels category. In today’s announcement, AirAsia has promised that more chatrooms and channels should emerge as chat members grow.
Of course, chat wouldn’t be chat without one-to-one private conversations. According to the company, you can search for other users via nickname or sync your phonebook contacts to the app.
Another interesting feature of the new airasia Chat is the ability to communicate with other AirAsia passengers regardless of whether they are on the ground or up in the air. Naturally, the capability to chat while in the air is only available for those who are on AirAsia WiFi-enabled flights.
Additionally, you can set up a personal profile complete with a photo and play free games like Point Catcher, which gives you BIG points that you can spend on the services within AirAsia super app.
This all doesn’t seem much right now, but AirAsia promises more features in the future “which are on par with the best in the business”. Would that mean end-to-end encryption as provided by apps like WhatsApp and Telegram? We can’t say.
In its current state though, the airasia Chat is predictably centred around the company’s growing ecosystem and it seems more like a community forum for its customers than anything else. Then again, it is still interesting to see how the company will grow its new messaging platform as the airasia Chat is quite an oddball when compared to other services within the AirAsia’s super app ecosystem.
(Source: AirAsia.)
