If you are considering to fly within Southeast Asia, October is the right moment. Vanilla Airline, a budget airline unit of ANA Holdings, just started its first international flights from Ho Chi Minh to Tokyo, Osaka, Okinawa and Taipei on 15th September 2016.

Why Vietnam?

At a recent press conference, Milo Yamamuro explained that three factors that make it an attractive market for Vanilla ... first, Vietnam has very high economic growth rate right now’ second there is an increase in travel demands between Vietnam, Japan and Taiwan; and third, from September 1st, any Vietnamese passport holder who has traveled to the USA, UK, Japan, Canada, New Zealand and Australia can enjoy a free 30-day visa to Japan. This promises more traffic flows in these destinations.

 

 

Despite Vietnam’s high economic growth rate over the last few years, the budget airline industry is highly competitive and has five major players in the game including AirAsia, Vietjetair, NokAir, Vietstar, and now Vanilla Airline.

So in such a competitive environment, how can Vanilla make it?

First, Vanilla is focusing its marketing strategy on a specific customer segment: business people who make frequent flights to Taiwan and Japan. This helps them to narrow the competitors in the market.

Second is the service quality; Vanilla is committed to ensuring that their flights will always be on time, so that the frequent business travelers can depend upon them.

Third, is pricing ... compare to Vietjet – the prices show on Vanilla’s website are the same as the final customer fee, which makes pricing more transparent to customers.

In the fourth quarter of 2016, Vanilla Air will expand their routes to include Cebu i(Philippines) as their and plans to look at other Southeast Asian destinations in the future. The company has a goal to reach sales of 71 billion yen ($700 million USD) by 2020, which will make Vanilla one of the top budget carriers in the Japan – Southeast Asia – Taiwan markets.