Any airline folk that haven’t heard of Fliggy, formerly Alitrip, might want to take note sooner rather than later.

There are already impressive numbers coming out of the online travel platform, which acts as an online mall for brands and is part of China’s Alibaba ecosystem.

The travel brand began life about two-and-a-half years ago and by the end of last year had about 200 million users, 100 million downloads of its app and annual sales for 100 of its shops of almost $15 million.

Then, there are the really eye-watering numbers showing that on one day, 11 November 2016, more than 100 of the online platform’s suppliers hit revenue of about $736,000.

With figures like that, on top of the burgeoning China outbound market, you’d think most travel and hospitality brands might have an idea what Fliggy is.

But, a show of hands at a recent airline conference revealed most hadn’t heard of Fliggy (or perhaps they were just shy).

Wells Zheng, vice president, international air tickets at Fliggy, was providing the insight at the recent Amadeus Airline Executive Summit in Dublin.

He says the OTP is different to online travel agents and metasearch sites in that it is “a direct connection between the airline and their customer.”

Zheng says airlines can gather data directly from customers as well as expose their brand.

He adds that while Fliggy is trying to “eliminate the information asymmetry”, OTAs “stand between brands and their customers.”

Zheng also says the OTP’s main product – it’s flagship store- enables brands to operate their own shop but provides them with marketing and data analytics support.

Finnair is one of the most recent airlines to join the platform (snapshot of who’s on board below).

At the recent SITA Summit, the carrier’s chief commercial officer Juha Järvinen spoke of how airlines need to “stay awake” and be present on platforms such as Fliggy and WeChat.

Amadeus provides its meta booking technology to the service.

NB: Reporter’s travel to the Airline Executive Summit was supported by Amadeus.