As Traveloka celebrates its 10th year anniversary in February, the
travel/lifestyle super-app reveals its plans in further helping travel
agents establish a new footing in the new era of tourism.
What started off as a startup which developed a travel metasearch
engine to simplify travel from Indonesia to destinations across the
world, has now blossomed into a behemoth of an operation spanning
millions of customers across six key Southeast Asia markets — Indonesia,
Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines.
As a tech company with a data-driven culture, Traveloka has over the
years, continued building diverse and collaborative teams with a deep
understanding of each market that they serve, utilising its
human-centred proprietary technology to provide a myriad of lifestyle
experiences for every type of traveller.
“As we all know, the travel industry and tourism sector have been
impacted in the past few years due to the pandemic, and Traveloka was no
exception,” Caesar Indra, president of Traveloka, said at the 10th
anniversary celebration on 28 February at Shangri-La Singapore.
While the disruption to the travel sector may have curtailed
business, the acceleration of digital transformation has allowed
Traveloka to provide more innovative solutions not only for its
customers, but also for its partners and stakeholders.
“There’s
a real opportunity to collaborate and bring together the best in the
industry by leveraging our complementary strengths to provide travellers
with a one-core platform for a seamless, customised and flexible travel
experience,” Indra added.
Traveloka's Pascal Gekko says that increased collaboration in the travel trade ecosystem benefits both OTAs and traditional agents. Photo Credit: Traveloka
With 40 million monthly active users and a total number of over 60
million app downloads in Traveloka’s arsenal, travel agents can tap into
Traveloka’s extensive network to boost uptake of their product
offerings.
Pascal Gekko, head of international accommodation at Traveloka, says
that the platform is constantly looking to expand its experiences, and
travel agents with offerings that Traveloka deems suitable and appealing
for their customers are more than welcomed to list these products
within the platform.
“This is the most natural form of partnerships we have, because we
engage the travel agents as direct partners as well,” Gekko said. “This
means that more people are able to see their offerings on Traveloka, and
travel agents can exercise their creativity in innovating new
experiences that Traveloka can promote.” The super-app even extends its
support in offering discounted rates from its extensive breadth of
suppliers for travel agents to form a package.
In addition to having these tours, packages or other products listed
within the platform, Traveloka further supports their travel trade
partners by promoting these products on their various marketing
channels. According to Gekko, “we even share the engagement data we
have, like whether people are engaged with your product, or they prefer
some other product, and agents can then tweak the products in line with
these trends.”
“We always look at the mutual growth together,” Gekko concluded. “If
our partners are successful, then we are successful, it cannot be any
other way.”