HOTELS.COM today announced its new localised booking sites for Indonesia and Vietnam, which will feature more market-relevant inventory, as well as be backed up by dedicated offline sales and support teams. This brings its Asia-Pacific network to 15 portals in 10 languages.
Johan Svanstrom, vice president and managing director, Hotels.com Asia Pacific, said growth was very high in many Asian markets, but judging from Internet transactions, volumes logged by Google and the expansion strategies of low-cost carriers, both countries were priorities.
Their combined population is similar to that of the US, making them two of the biggest nations in South-east Asia, he added.
Said Svanstrom: “We will run promotions tailored to them by having domestic and outbound destinations that the population is interested in.”
To match the burgeoning growth of domestic travel in Indonesia, for example, this would mean the addition of rooms in cities such as Bandung, Surabaya and Medan.
Hotels.com is also beefing up its team members in both countries, who will build relationships with hotels in order to support inbound operations.
Declining to reveal specific figures, Svanstrom said he was happy with the initial response. “There were transactions within an hour-and-a-half of launching these sites (around two weeks ago) and transactions have continued”. Indonesia is faring slightly better, he added.
With online travel penetration in both countries at levels lower than the average recorded across Asia, he believed that there was room for several players.
Svanstrom also expects to cash in on the corporate travel market, which he noted was increasingly using the web to book flights and hotels.
