Travel activity booking platform Viator is ready to capture a slice of the lucrative Asia-Pacific market, with plans underway to widen the company’s footprint across China, Japan and South-east Asia.

Anita Ngai, general manager of Viator Asia-Pacific, who was appointed to this newly-created role last year, shared that while at least 70 per cent of their users are from the US, UK and Australia, her responsibility aims to “balance this proportion” with Asia’s travellers.

While acknowledging that they are still in their early days in Asia, Ngai said: “It is not as if we never gave much thought to this part of the world (before), it was just that we didn’t have enough resources earlier.”

While Ngai is based in Viator’s San Francisco headquarters, she said that they have since employed new staff in Singapore and may likewise do so for Japan and Hong Kong as these are their current top markets in Asia.

Working closely with the Viator and TripAdvisor teams, Ngai’s goal is to localise the customer experience and marketing approach, as well as improve the relevance of its product mix with the increasing number of sophisticated FITs.

When asked if Viator is considered late in the game, especially with similar online activity platforms already established here, she said: “We have a much longer company history and this gives us a stronger relationship with tour operators and suppliers which allows us to provide more unique products and also competitive prices.

“For instance, one of our unique selling points are our skip-the-line tours which has been highly rated, and some tours that are exclusive only to us.”

Commenting on last week’s announcement of Viator’s CEO Barrie Seidenberg resigning from TripAdvisor to pursue opportunities outside the company, Ngai said: “This will not affect our plans or strategies in any way and we wish Barrie well.”

Meanwhile, TripAdvisor will expand the role of Dermot Halpin, president attractions and vacation rentals, TripAdvisor, to serve as president for both its global vacation rentals and attractions divisions.

Airbnb now offers tours and activities as part of ambitions to become a complete travel platform.

The new Trips section offers its users access to activities provided by private guides with current content comprising around 500 activities available in 12 cities worldwide.

The launch also allows Airbnb hosts and local experts to offer recommendations on place to visit and allows businesses to list their upcoming events.

A new itinerary feature is being added at the same time for users to plan and manage their bookings with Airbnb. The company stated that machine learning technology is being applied to this so that better informed travel suggestions can be offered to users in the future.

Meanwhile, addressing security concerns, a new identity authentication process is being introduced where hosts and guests will be required to scan an official ID and take a selfie, both of which must match.

In time, Airbnb expects to also make available flights and services through its app.

Washington Dulles International Airport

The US state of Virginia is looking to leverage Singapore as a hub to target corporate and leisure travellers from South-east Asia.

To that end, Terry McAuliffe, governor of Virginia, who was on a trade mission to Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Australia last week, said he would like to see Singapore Airlines (SIA) operate direct flights to Washington Dulles International Airport.

Rita McClenny, president and CEO, Virginia Tourism Corporation, said: “United Airlines (UA) and Air China currently offer the biggest number of direct flights between Beijing and Dulles and the governor has renegotiated a revised agreement with UA to commit to Dulles airport to 2024.”

She adds that the purpose of coming to Singapore is to raise awareness about business and tourism opportunities in Virginia and to “talk to airlines and tour operators to create US tour packages that incorporate a two- to-four-night stay in Virginia”.

Hopes are for SIA to operate non-stop services to Dulles as well, even as the national carrier is set to resume direct flights to New York – which is a five-hour drive from Virginia’s capital of Richmond – in 2018.

Asia contributes an estimated 510,000 arrivals out of 1.7 million international visitors to Virginia annually.

The number of foreign visitors arriving in Japan is on course to hit a record high of 24 million before the end of the year, according to the head of the Japan Tourism Agency, with the number of arrivals via low-cost carriers and cruise ships experiencing the most marked growth.

JTA commissioner Akihiko Tamura announced that arrivals between January and October were up 23.3 per cent over the same period in 2015 and had reached a record 20.11 million with two months of the year still left.

The government had set a target of 20 million visitors by the year 2020, but has been forced to radically revise its targets thanks to the growth of budget airlines, increasing number of cruise ship visitors and easier visa requirements.

The new target is 40 million foreign arrivals in the year in which Tokyo will host the Olympic Games.

For October alone, arrivals jumped 16.8 percent year-on-year to 2.13 million, the second-highest monthly figure ever recorded. The Japan National Tourism Organisation puts that figure in part down to a national holiday in China.

The growth in the cruise sector has been particularly noteworthy, Tamura said, with statistics showing that while a mere 871 passengers arrived aboard cruise ships in January 2015, the figure for August 2016 amounted to 241,930 arrivals.

Domestic tour operators in Thailand are confident that royal projects and the routes that lead to them will revive domestic tourism in 2017 after a decade of lackluster performance.

They saw business opportunities stemming from the love of the Thai people towards their late King since his passing on October 13. After a one-month mourning period, demand ramped up for trips that the King took to his project sites.

Agents will therefore feature more of these royal development projects as key selling points for their tour programmes next year, according to Phuriwat Limtavonrus, president of the Association of Domestic Travel (ADT).

ADT will start off by choosing to promote routes from among the 70 highlighted from the His Majesty’s Footsteps campaign presented by the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT).

He said these tours have become trendy as the locals wanted in-depth experiences about the late King’s royal projects and their histories. Corporate clients too, were interested with the routes as part of their CSR activities. “We expect that these will help to increase our sales by 50 per cent next year,” added Phuriwat.

Jittakorn Wijannarong, managing director of domestic tour operator Soda Management, said sales with corporate clients next year should rise by at least 25 per cent, the biggest growth for them in five years.

“Everyone wants to do good things for our beloved King. Therefore, I strongly believe that this trend will not be short-lived,” said Jittakorn.

The Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA) has called on government agencies to remove regulatory barriers that threaten the growth of the air transport industry.

At the conclusion of its 60th assembly of presidents held in Manila last week, the AAPA presented six resolutions, including appealing governments “to respect the primacy of ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) standards and guidance”.

Director general Andrew Herdman said the AAPA is “deeply concerned about safety oversight in the region, where carriers can sometimes find themselves subject to restrictions or even banned from operating to other countries, due to a lack of effective national regulatory oversight in line with accepted international standards”.

To avoid passenger inconvenience and delays caused by “increasingly complex, intrusive, onerous and inconsistent aviation security procedures”, the AAPA also asked governments to rethink policies that will “strike a more reasonable balance between passenger facilitation and aviation security”.

As past pleas have remained unheeded, the AAPA has now renewed calls for governments to refrain from increasing the tax burden in any form.

“Governments continue to misjudge the strength and negative sentiment held by Asian airline leaders about the unnecessary burden of misguided policies and unjustified taxation,” he added.

Philippine Airlines president Jaime Bautista laments: “Airport slot and infrastructure shortages; onerous taxes and charges; burdensome and needlessly complex regulations; red tape that produces red ink; the quest for effective ways to protect the earth; and the call for a more connected world (are challenges we already face everyday).”

Herdman believes that removing barriers to industry growth and profitability is ultimately beneficial to the growth of the nation’s economy as well, and that it is critical for governments to recognise that.

Daryl Lee

Australia’s Webjet has launched FIT Ruums, a wholesale travel distributor operating under its WebBeds FZ division, to offer an array of travel services, such as hotel rooms and transfers, to the Asian travel trade.

Daryl Lee, the newly-appointed director of WebBeds FZ, said: “The rising affluence of Asian countries is driving a new travelling class – a shift away from groups and towards FIT.”

This means requiring a different set of distribution tools to better cater to this segment of customers. “The consumer buying behavior varies by market and different people like to book travel through different mediums which means a fragmented distribution landscape that requires good aggregators to support for sustainable growth,” he explained.

Lee adds that he isn’t too worried about being a newcomer to the scene, as he believes the travel supply chain is welcoming of distribution diversification to mitigate sales risk.

When asked why they are entering the market now, he said: “Asia-Pacific is the second biggest source market in the world and we have seen a strong transition from group travel to FIT in recent years.

“Therefore, the market requires a lot more support and will benefit from a true pan-Asian specialist which the market lacks today.”

FIT Ruums, based in Singapore, has plans to expand across the region. Satellite offices are already open in Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan with additional locations in Japan, Thailand, India and Indonesia being planned to open in 2017.

Future expansion into the Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia is currently being considered.

Two founding members of the Value Alliance – Vanilla Air under ANA Holdings, and Cebu Pacific – are now equal (15% each) shareholders alongside Scoot and Nok Airlines of Air Black Box (ABB) Asia Pacific, the joint venture responsible for making the Value Alliance a reality.

The remaining equity is held by ABB’s majority investor VaultPAD Ventures, a US-based private airline travel and tourism venture accelerator.

With more alliance members now also shareholders of ABB Asia Pacific, this signals a continued desire and foothold by the LCCs to retain and gain further control over their sales and distribution capabilities.

The Value Alliance, comprising budget carriers Cebu Pacific, Jeju Air, Nok Air, NokScoot, Scoot, Tigerair Singapore, Tigerair Australia and Vanilla Air, formed the partnership earlier in May to enable direct interline ticket and ancillary sales among member airlines in one booking, a feat made possible using ABB’s platform.

The distribution solution provided by ABB, the world’s first multi-carrier interlining and booking system, remains the only cloud-based tool capable of doing so and the company has a patent pending for the technology they developed.

Immediate reactions to the formation of the LCC-only alliance were huge, with many questioning the relevancy of more traditional distribution channels such as GDSs.

But Mildred Cheong, general manager of ABB Asia Pacific assures that there will always be a market for the personalised services that travel agents provide. What the Value Alliance offers is an enhancement of the direct sales capabilities of LCCs.

To that end, the alliance is more of a competition for OTAs as its membership grows, and plans for expansion are already in the works, revealed Cheong.

“We are in talks with some airlines at the moment, and while I can’t reveal who they are, you can see where the alliance’s coverage lacks right now geographically,” she said, adding that markets like China, India, Vietnam and Indonesia are prime targets.

She adds that beyond just an increment in alliance members, the technology that ABB provides also allows for expansion in terms of bilateral interline partnerships.

As an example, this could mean Scoot being able to allow interline transactions with a full-service carrier from Europe, that doesn’t belong to the Value Alliance, from its own website.

The benefits of interlining, as opposed to joint ventures or codeshares, is the ability for airlines to be able to cross-merchandise their products without compromising on their brand integrity, asserts Cheong.

She adds that when the technology of all current eight members of the Value Alliance is fully integrated with the ABB platform in 1Q2017, a major push by the LCCs can be expected to happen.