SINGAPORE — Adding to relief efforts for victims of typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, AirAsia is donating 250,000 seats as part of its focused campaign called To Philippines With Love. From today (Nov 18) until Nov 24, Filipinos here can fly back for free to visit their families and loved ones on the budget airline, which they would do via Kuala Lumpur. Those with a valid Filipino passport or identification number can book these free seats on AirAsia.com, and would only need to pay for applicable taxes and fees.

The airline is also freeing up cargo space for accredited non-governmental organisations (NGOs), aid and humanitarian agencies. Interested groups can send in their requests to foundation [at] airasia.com.

On top of these initiatives, the airline is matching every donation made on its AirAsia Foundation website www.airasiafoundation.com/typhoonhaiyan until Dec 31. All donations will go towards assisting the Philippine Red Cross. And passengers flying with AirAsia can also do their bid on-board, when flight attendants make their rounds with donation boxes.

In a similar push, home-grown vacation rental website, PandaBed, has donated US$5,000 (S$6,230) in relief credits to those displaced by the natural disaster, which they can use to stay in any of PandaBed’s properties in the Philippines. Victims need to show a scanned copy of the IC and give a short testimonial of how they were affected. Aid agencies can also contact Pandabed for Relief Credits by emailing haiyanRC [at] pandabed.com.

Other travel companies contributing towards the relief efforts include Royal Caribbean and Hilton Hotels and Resorts. The cruise company count Filipinos as the largest nationality working across its 41 ships and it has partnered up with World Vision for fund raising. And those who’re a member of Hilton’s loyalty programme HHonors, will receive 10 HHonors Bonus Points for every US$1 donated to Global Giving (www.globalgiving.org/hhonors).