THOSE looking to tap Indonesia’s growing number of Internet users must ensure that multi-payment systems are in place first, said participants at yesterday’s Web in Travel (WIT) Indonesia conference.
Indonesia posts 2.5 billion search queries a month (averagely 83.3 million a day), while travel-related searches number two million a day, according to research by Google Indonesia. Airline searches lead travel-related queries, followed by hotels, said Henky Prihatna, head of travel, Google Indonesia.
However, low credit card penetration in the country and online payment security concerns have forced OTAs, airlines and hotels in Indonesia to adopt a multi-payment system to capture the crowd, offering ATM and cash payments to settle online or call centre bookings.
Eztravel.co.id, whose primary product is airline ticketing, is seeing search queries soar, while online bookings remain insignificant. Eztravel CEO, Eric Tjetjep, said: “Customers only use our website to search for best prices available, but most of the bookings are done offline, through our call centre.”
Mandala Airlines commercial director, Brata Rafly, added: “Domestic airline traffic grows 12 per cent annually (reflecting the rise of the middle-class market). Although people have money, many of them do not have credit cards, only ATM cards.”
“In Indonesia, tier two and tier three (destinations) do not have (good) Internet (access), so what we need is a B2B2C model, a combination of OTAs and traditional offline retailers to reach a wide base of travellers around Indonesia.”
Indonesia is not the only country plagued by slow online booking growth, with MakeMyTrip chief business officer, Amit Saberwal, noting that online payment security was also an issue in India.
