October 13, 2008 21:27 PM
By Siti Radziah Hamzah
KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 13 (Bernama) - Express Rail Link Sdn Bhd (ERL) is looking at five to 10 percent growth in its overall business next year.
Its chief executive officer, Dr. Aminuddin Adnan, said the target could be achieved with new strategies that have been outlined by the company and expected to be carried out by end of this year or early next year.
ERL is looking to expand its KLIA Transit business for the Low Cost Carrier Terminal (LCCT) and to market its services in Europe.
Aminuddin noted that its KLIA Transit service was growing and already recording higher number of passengers than its KLIA Express service.
KLIA Transit captures between 6,500 and 7,000 passengers a day while KLIA Express serves 4,500 passengers a day.
The company is planning to focus on KLIA Transits KL Sentral station to Salak Tinggi station and three connecting buses from Salak Tinggi to the LCCT.
"The competitors are charging RM8-RM9 from KL Sentral to LCCT. (However) we are looking (at a figure) higher than that because the fare from KL Sentral to Salak Tinggi is already RM12.50," Aminuddin explained.
He added that the transit bus fare would be waived for passengers who commute with KLIA Transit from KL Sentral, while passengers from Bandar Tasik Selatan and Putrajaya will be charged for the bus transit.
ERL operates two high-speed rail services, namely KLIA Express and KLIA Transit, which are connected from KL Sentral to the KL International Airport (KLIA).
"At the moment, KLIA Express has not been growing because even the traffic at the main terminal building has dropped to some extent," he told Bernama in an interview on the sidelines of the 14th World Route Development Forum here Sunday.
He said there was a 20 percent decline for the usage of KLIA Express since the opening of the LCCT in March 2006.
"We are affected because we have seen a lot of people switching from normal airlines to low cost carrier," he said, adding that the company is hoping to capture part of the Air Asias market.
He added ERL is looking at the Air Asias market, as they would probably constitute about 35 percent of the traffic at KLIA.
Aminuddin said that ERL is looking to selling its tickets worldwide and have started with Amadeus to market its service throughout the 300,000 Amadeus sales outlets in Europe.
Spain-based Amadeus is the leading Global Distribution System (GDS) and the biggest processor of travel bookings in the world.
"They are very strong in Europe. At the moment, we are almost finalising the legal arrangements with them and our technical people are already solving some technical issues," he said.
"We are looking at two to five percent (contribution from this partnership). This is a new market. So far, we notice more and more foreigners are taking our train. They are quite used to doing this in Europe," he added.
Source: BERNAMA
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