On March 24, the adobo SheCreative Network kicked off its first conference for the year, “The Future Is Creative: Designing Growth Through Creative Intelligence.” Hosted and moderated by Inka Magnaye, the event was headlined by a roster of powerful and insightful women across different industries. One of these was the inimitable Candice Iyog, Chief Marketing and Customer Experience Officer of Cebu Pacific Air.
With Cebu Pacific celebrating its 30th year, Candice first took the time to thank those who have flown with the airline, especially the frequent flyers. As the leading airline in the country, Cebu Pacific has fundamentally changed the way Filipinos travel and view tourism within and outside our country. With its disciplined approach to investing in the newest aircraft, well-trained staff, and above all, its cost-efficient fleet and affordable prices, the airline has quite literally opened the doors to the world for the masses and allowed us to realize our dreams of exploring the world without breaking the bank.
In the last year alone, Cebu Pacific has flown 27 million passengers — a record number for the carrier and a 10% year-on-year accomplishment. The brand has also nabbed a couple of prestige awards in its industry, including Asia’s Low-Cost Airline of the Year from the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA); the Best Airline at the Routes Asia Awards; Finance Asia’s Best Transportation Award; and the Strongest Airline Brand in ASEAN by Brand Finance. And yet, even with all these accolades, the company remains humble, according to Candice.
“We recognize that we are enormously privileged to be a leading carrier in the Philippines, and we take this responsibility seriously because we recognize that there is still a lot of work to be done,” Candice explained. She went on to divulge that the carrier’s air trips per capita is at 0.35, which translates to just 3.5 in every 10 Filipinos who travel every year.
For a population of 100 million, this is quite small, especially when compared with Singapore, which has 4.21 capita, or even Malaysia, which has 1.58 capita. “We lag in the region. Therefore, there’s still a lot of potential. And that’s just within the Philippines,” she added.
Candice then pointed to the two billion people within a four-hour flying radius from the Philippines, which boasts being the closest beach destination to North Asia and a geographical center in Asia. “The market is there. There is a lot to see and explore in the Philippines. There is still also a lot of untapped potential. Now that we’ve reached our current scale of flying 27 million passengers and as infrastructure continues to improve in the Philippines, the challenge is, how do we go beyond being a functional brand to a brand that not only resonates, but inspires so that we can use this to fuel growth that will then take us beyond to the next 30 years?”
Painting a bigger picture and pivoting towards a solution, Candice recalled a 2024 study done by the Boston Consulting Group on the Filipino dream. Through this, they found that Filipinos — regardless of their age or income bracket — indicated travel as one of their top aspirations.
“It’s now part of their lifestyle,” Candice stated. “People at work just decide to up and go over the weekend if there’s an announcement of a holiday, or just because they feel like they’re so stressed. It’s almost a need already. Travel figures prominently in their dreams. So we asked ourselves, ‘Why do people dream of flying?’”
“Our LCC model, for over the past 30 years, network breadth and reach, and service have been able to successfully drive interest. We’ve stimulated travel. But similar to what the presentations were [about] earlier today, there is interest, but what is the intent behind this dream of traveling? We needed to know the intent so that we can speak to it in order for us to then inspire and unlock the full potential of the brand. It turns out, we actually didn’t have to look too far or reinvent who we were, because all we needed to do was just go back to our roots and tell our story better.”
Candice recalled the very same spirit and intent of Cebu Pacific Founder John Gokongwei Jr. when he built the airline company 30 years ago. “His dream was to make air travel accessible to everyone. Now, we are unashamed to actually say that Cebu Pacific and our business model is an affordable, reliable, convenient, and safe bus service in the sky.”
She emphasized that the company is not pretending to be a full-service carrier offering business class. Rather, the kind of service Cebu Pacific offers is a value service — one that the country needs.
“We have a very clear purpose, and it is the same today as it was when we were established 30 years ago, from when we took that very first flight from Manila to Cebu on March 8, 1996. Our growth story continues to be built on the impact we’ve created for the Philippines and for the Filipino, the OFW, or the first-time traveler.”
“Our leadership has always been grounded in enabling dreams to fly, and who better to tell this story than creative partners we’ve discovered as well in Cebu — Happy Garaje, who helped us bring this story to life. Grounded on the innovation principle that also happens to be our purpose and painted on a canvas or a vehicle — pun intended — that is also very much part of our identity. We realized after this process that innovation can also mean looking at things differently. So, we used our livery to tell our story — one that resonates with the Filipino dream. At the heart of every story that we discovered and that we learned is that we are a nation of dreamers, of families longing for reunions, barkadas craving adventures, first-time travelers chasing their take off, because we believe that flying should be for everyone — not just a privileged few.”
Appealing to the wanderlust of Filipinos and stirring the travel bug within each of us, Candice closed her presentation, saying, “For every Filipino with a dream to see more, to feel more, to be more, we are the wings of weekend getaways and organic encounters, the carriers of OFW hugs, the start of once-in-a-lifetime honeymoons, because we bring you home. We take you beyond. Because we believe that when flights are within reach, dreams take flight. And when everyone can fly, the sky is no longer the limit.”
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