Thread by @TheManajemen

With C-19 not ending anytime soon, most hammered industry is aviation & tourism. Tourism is big revenue driver for Malaysia. It’s also the sector with biggest multiplier effect because people spend money on hotel, food, shopping - that benefits wide range of sectors

Malaysia Airlines - we must ask the question do we need a national airline? If the answer is an adamant yes, the thought process around how to run the airline must change. It must be part of larger tourism play, rather than focusing purely as an airline., as it’s been doing now.

This means looking at the Middle Eastern model where the state owns the airline, airport & some leisure / tourism assets. The airline is used as a means to draw tourists to the country.

The revenue is made not exclusively through airlines, but via airport charges, duty free shopping & hotel stay. There will be element of cross subsidy but the bigger mutiplier effect for economy is huge.

This is why ME airlines fly to almost all destinations globally. Not saying MH should, but they can pick and choose countries with strong tourism potential and start there first

This will involve taking MAHB private. Remaining a listed entity will make this cross subsidisation method challenging as there are other shareholders involved.

Will this involve money? Yes. But better spend this one off privatisation amount than injecting capital into MH every few years, with no results in sight, as what we have done

A master tourism holding entity needs to be created that will own the (1) airline, (2) airport & (3) leisure / hospitality. It becomes a vertically integrated tourism play.

This will mean the thought process of how MH operates must change. You need strong network & revenue mgmt people. You need to work with all tourism partners and create a seamless experience. You need to think broader tourism than purely airline

Singapore Airlines did well because Singapore is large business hub that created the travel demand for airlines. Hotels benefitted from this, so did wider economy. Changi is an extremely efficient airport for layover so Singapore benefits again from duty free and short tourism

Malaysia is not a business hub, so tourism is key. We must identify which country has potential and fly there to create demand. Then make that demand spend to help the economy.

Now is the best time to restructure the industry. Demand is low, assets are cheap, there is sufficient downtime to work on restructuring the industry without any distractions

Our tourism industry has great potential but fragmented with many breaks in between the chain. Govt owns the key assets in tourism and can form something interesting here. Key is always finding good professionals to run it, and run it commercially.