Indonesia’s plans to transform Komodo Island into a premium tourist destination by charging foreign tourists an annual membership fee of US$1,000 has raised more than a few eyebrows in the travel sector.
The new admission price to access Komodo National Park was proposed by East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) governor Viktor Bungtilu Laiskodat in a bid to elevate the prestige of the popular tourist destination, as well as to limit tourist numbers on the island to save the supposedly-dwindling population of Komodo dragons.
Indonesia’s tourism players question the proposed US$1,000 annual admission fee for tourists to enter Komodo National Park; Padar Island in Komodo National Park pictured
Earlier in October, it was announced that Komodo Island will remain open to visitors, after a study showed that the giant lizard is not under threat of extinction.
The Komodo Park, which currently charges Rp250,000 (US$17) per entry for foreign tourists and Rp75,000 for domestic ones, welcomed a total of 176,834 tourists in 2018 – a 24 per cent increase from the 134,184 visitors the previous year. It was estimated that the park generated total ticket sales revenue of Rp36.3 billion in 2018.
Observing that the average visitor to the Komodo Park were middle-class travellers, Flores Exotic Tours’ director Leonardus Nyoman questioned the viability of a US$1,000 annual membership fee targeting luxury travellers, as the steep price could affect footfall to the UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Urging the relevant bodies to conduct proper site investigation and market analysis prior to launching the revised fee structure, Leonardus added that news reports about the proposed US$1,000 entrance fee to Komodo Park had shocked his business partners and overseas clients who deemed it too expensive.
Echoing that thought was Incito Vacations’ owner Sebastian Ng, who said that green-lighting the scheme would make Indonesian president Joko Widodo’s ambition target of hitting 18 million international arrivals this year even harder to achieve.
Furthermore, he urged the governor to refrain from making controversial comments while awaiting an official decision from the Ministry of Environment and Forestry (MOEF), which oversees the Komodo Park.
Ng said NTT governor Viktor Bungtilu Laiskodat’s earlier remarks about the US$1,000 membership fee had created business uncertainty that could potentially disadvantage local tourism business. Already, he had received queries about the fee issue from foreign tour operators he partnered with.
“These are like double strikes for us. The first strike was the governor’s proposal to close Komodo Park for a year, which already affected people’s interest to visit (although the MOEF has finally decided not to close it),” he remarked. (The proposed $1,000 membership fee) is the second strike.”
Although the government raised the price of entry into Komodo Park for ecological concerns, Indonesian Hotel and Restaurant Association’s chairman Hariyadi Sukamdani hoped that the proposed new price would not come into effect for the sake of the locals who mostly relied on the tourism sector and Komodo Island as the province’s main tourist destination.
Before Komodo Park could gain recognition as a premium destination, the local government needs to develop new attractions in NTT so that tourists could have alternative places to visit in the province when if they cannot afford the annual membership fee of Komodo Park, opined Haryadi. This was to prevent tourist arrivals from declining sharply.
Responding to the criticisms, Shana Fatina Sukarsono, head of Labuan Bajo Flores Tourism Authority, expressed optimism that the annual membership fee would not reduce inbound arrival because travellers would understand that it would be used for conservation purposes.
In early 2020, the ticket price to enter Komodo Island would be discussed again by the MOEF, said Shana, adding that the process of determining the appropriate fee could take up to a year.
Global travel spend by Chinese outbound tourists in 1H2019 hit US$127.5 billion, according to the 2019 Chinese Outbound Travel Consumption Report by UnionPay International (UPI), released in partnership with Chinese OTA Ctrip, based on payment data from UPI and statistics of travel products bookings from Ctrip.
Some key takeaways from the report are that in 2019, there were 10 per cent more female outbound travellers than male, though the average expenditure per person of male travellers is higher. As well, there has been a steady growth in outbound tourists from second- and third-tier cities.
Chinese travellers are putting greater emphasis on dining and accommodation: study
By age, the post-80s and 60+ age bracket made up the highest spending, while people born in the 2000s are following the trend of solo travel, the study found. The different customer profiles unveiled by the report all point to a growingly diverse set of travellers, all with different expectations and demands for services. For example, the young generation sees mobile payment services as essential while seniors seek information.
The report also found that destinations in Europe, the US and Australia remained top favourites among Chinese outbound travellers. However, for the first time, there was substantial growth in visitors to countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative, such as Belarus, Myanmar, Georgia and Nepal.
The report also noted that Chinese travellers care significantly about hospitality, dining and booking before arrival, with 80 per cent of travellers opting to stay at high-end or five-star hotels. Spending on F&B in regions such as the South Pacific and the Middle East also saw an increase of around 60 per cent.
There has also been substantial growth in online bookings for entertainment and attractions, according to the report. This highly segmented group of travellers are increasingly demanding more versatile services, it added.
More domestic tourists are heading to Shanghai than ever, drawn by the metropolis’ ever-growing supply of internationally-branded theme parks and attractions.
Shanghai Disneyland, for instance, is a popular attraction that welcomed 11.8 million visitors in 2018, up from 11 million in 2017 – its first full year of operation.
Chen: Shanghai’s tourism authorities are rolling out new products and attractions to attract leisure travellers from the various Chinese provinces
Shanghai Municipal Administration of Culture and Tourism, marketing and promotion department’s director, Patrick Chen, said: “In Disneyland, domestic tourists spend quite a fair bit on the hotel rooms and make purchases at the park. Also, these visitors are usually the younger generation who tend to spend more, as well as travel more.”
When Legoland Shanghai opens in 2023, Chen is confident that the theme park will “bring in even more domestic traffic”, while the constantly expanding high-speed rail network will “improve connectivity” within the vast country. Currently, more than 180 cities across some 30 provinces are connected by high-speed trains.
But domestic tourists are drawn to Shanghai not just for its renowned attractions, as the Chinese port city also plays host to other global events throughout the year, such as the MotoGP world championship, WGC-HSBC Champions golf tournament, and ATP Masters 1000 Shanghai tennis tournament.
“We are also constantly updating our products and attractions, e.g. an acrobat show run by a French company, to attract leisure travellers from the various Chinese provinces,” Chen shared.
In 2018, Shanghai welcomed 340 million domestic tourists, contributing a total revenue of RMB447 billion (US$64 billion).
Aside from domestic tourists, Shanghai is “of course” actively wooing the international market, Chen stressed. About 8.9 million overseas tourists visited Shanghai last year, up 2.4 per cent year-on-year.
While Chen believes Shanghai is likely to attain nine million international tourists in 2019, reaching the goal of achieving 10 million overseas tourists by 2020 is “slightly difficult”.
Chen explained: “To do this, I have to add around three million flight seats on international flights (which poses a problem). Currently, 70 per cent of the inbound traffic are Chinese, and only 30 per cent are foreigners.”
When asked if cruising may help to bolster inbound numbers, especially as China’s cruise industry has grown rapidly in recent years, he said that cruise ships bring in about 13,000 international passengers yearly, as homeporting ships generally catered to Shanghai’s outbound.
“I hope to see more international calls from cruise ships, especially from luxury lines such as SilverSea and Ponant. These high-spending cruisers usually fly into Shanghai, stay a few days, before cruising to Japan and South Korea, helping to contribute to the local economy,” Chen explained.
Hopes are high that China’s swelling middle-class travellers will be able to help steer Myanmar’s lagging tourism industry to recovery.
As many longhaul markets continue to shrink for Myanmar, China has emerged the front runner in arrivals. Yangon International Airport welcomed 80 per cent more Chinese visitors in the first eight months of 2019, based on the latest available figures.
Myanmar is placing high hopes on Chinese travellers to boost its floundering travel industry
Sammy Samuels, managing director of Myanmar Shalom, said: “The Chinese are playing a key role in stimulating the tourism industry’s recovery.”
He added that the spike in visitors from China is helping fill hotels, with some starting to see full occupancy, while there have been reports of large groups taking hot air balloon trips in Bagan.
Pan Pacific Hotels Group’s two Yangon-based properties have been “encouraged” by the uptick in interest from China – now its strongest source market – amid slumping markets, said Neo Soon Hup, executive vice-president, operations.
An increase in charter flight connections to Chinese destinations will spur greater awareness of Myanmar as a travel destination, noted Khiri Travel Myanmar general manager Melissa Tan, and subsequently more “discerning segments will follow”.
But to truly tap into China’s potential as a visitor source market, Myanmar needs to promote experiences away from what can be had in China – and they need to be accessible, she added.
“We also need to proactively promote multiple facets of the country rather than being seen as solely Buddhism-led experiences, which limits attracted market segments,” Tan said.
The Hilton Garden Inn brand will be making its entry into Pattaya through a management agreement with Honour Hotel and Retail.
Slated to debut in 2022, Hilton Garden Inn Pattaya City will be the second Hilton Garden Inn hotel in Thailand signed this year, following the announcement of the upcoming Hilton Garden Inn Bangkok in June.
Hilton’s representatives ink deal with Honour Hotel and Retail’s executives to open Hilton Garden Inn Pattaya City
Situated in North Pattaya, Hilton Garden Inn Pattaya City will be part of a mixed-use development featuring more than 2,000m² of commercial and retail space, as well as an adjacent 427-unit residential tower.
The hotel will feature 315 rooms ranging from 26m² to 52m² Two Bay Suites, an all-day restaurant, bar, and fitness centre, along with on-site parking.
There is currently one hotel managed by Hilton in Pattaya, operating under its flagship Hilton brand.
Japanese travel B2B wholesaler Overseas Travel Service (OTS) has formed an exclusive partnership in Asia with Travel Prologue (TP), a Singapore-headquartered hotel direct booking service provider.
This new strategic partnership for distribution is a pivotal thrust on the part of OTS to broaden its distribution network and supplier base outside of Japan, said the company in a statement.
Overseas Travel Service partners Travel Prologue to broaden distribution network beyond Japan
In order to tap into both the supplier and B2B channels, OTS, which supports over 6,000 agents in Japan, is partnering with TP on its B2B platform, Trip Affiliates Network (TA Network).
OTS’ managing director Mizuho Kayama said the partnership with TA Network will provide OTS with “the support to instantaneously contract dynamic rates” in excess of 300 hotels across Asia, excluding Japan.
Kayama revealed that OTS will be launching a new hotel group booking service by year-end, in collaboration with TA Network in Asia.
Travel Prologue’s executive director Josef Foo, said: “The OTS hotel group booking initiative extends our current FIT focus to a new group booking service. This enhances the hotel services we provide to our hotel and travel affiliates within TA Network.
He added: “Our strategic partnership with OTS broadens our entry into Japan and accelerates TA Networks’ expansion and footprint in Asia. This further enhances TA Network as an add-on SaaS solution. This will connect Asia-Pacific’s leading travel wholesalers, agents, and management companies, on a single platform.”
Banyan Tree Bangkok Hotel has launched the Saffron Cruise, a new riverboat cruise service offering a dining experience along the Chao Phraya River.
The 38m-long vessel features a show-kitchen restaurant and bar on the open-air main deck for alfresco daytime and evening dining, with air conditioning available upon request. Guests can also enjoy authentic Thai dishes courtesy of Banyan Tree’s signature Thai restaurant Saffron.
Saffron Cruise
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As well, the ship’s rooftop Moon Deck features a stool-sit bar and lounge plus a scenic Sky Bridge. On-board ambience includes live entertainment and cultural performances.
As a leisure river cruise service, Saffron Cruise also offers MICE hosting, including business and trade group meetings and company incentive events. Private charter packages include cooking classes, tailored spa treatments from the Banyan Tree Spa, engagement and wedding ceremonies, cultural/scenic tours, and more.
The cruise takes guests along the Chao Phraya and a cluster of popular riverside cultural sites and attractions, including Wat Arun/Temple of Dawn, The Grand Palace, Asiatique, and Royal Barge Museum.
Daily sunset cruise, inclusive of one standard drink at the Moon Deck, is priced at 550 baht (US$18) per person.
Daily dinner cruise, inclusive of a five-course Thai set menu plus one cocktail at Moon Deck, is priced at 3,200 baht per person.
Simon Barnett has been appointed hotel manager at Four Seasons Hotel Singapore.
With more than 25 years of varied experience and hospitality expertise, he was most recently hotel manager at Four Seasons Hotel Sydney.
Prior to that, he served as director of catering and conferences services in Four Seasons Sydney, as well as director of sales and marketing at the hotel.
Barnett has worked for international hospitality groups across the globe, including five years as director of sales and marketing at Jumeriah Hotels & Resorts in London and New York, and tenures at Hilton Hotels in the UK.
Villa de Pranakorn, operated by Unicorn Hospitality, has announced that Erik Lannge will be joining the property as general manager.
Lannge has been tasked with handling the pre-opening stages, as the 47-key property prepares to open its doors at the end of next month.
He has over eight years of experience in the hospitality sector, having first joined Oakwood as a management trainee, specialising in F&B. Lannge then moved to Rembrandt Hotel Bangkok, and later became the director of F&B at the Novotel Bangkok Siam Square.
In 2017, Lannge was appointed general manager of X2 Koh Samui, before being promoted to the role of cluster general manager for X2 Kui Buri, X2 Le Bayburi, and Away Pranburi Beach Resort.
Airlines are starting to put customers at the centre of airline retail experience, making great strides in their websites and digital offerings
Recent retailing agreements a “breakthrough” in rich data distribution, and experts say travel consumers will soon benefit from a modern flight shopping experience that more closely resembles Amazon or other e-commerce sites
Besides enabling modern flight shopping at scale, distribution of ATPCO’s rich content through Sabre and Amadeus platforms is expected to bring greater workflow efficiency for travel agents
ATPCO’s Robert Albert and Sabre’s Rakesh Narayanan discussed how the scalability of rich airline distribution would change flight retail experience for travel agents and consumers alike at the recent IATA Airline Industry Retailing Symposium
For an industry that is hooked on data and technological advancement, personalised online merchandising for airlines remains one of its under-invested areas, but growing digitalisation, together with changing customer expectations, are expected to drive a rapid transformation in the airline digital retailing space in the next decade.
That the airline industry, unlike the sophisticated retailing techniques already dominant in other sectors, has yet to embrace the retail model fully in tandem with fast-changing consumer behaviour and preferences, was a common refrain expressed by airline executives during the recent IATA Airline Industry Retailing Symposium, which took place in Bangkok.
Amazon experience for the skies? But in “an era of complete retail”, it is especially critical that airlines make flight shopping “far more intuitive” and “far more value focused” in order to attract a new generation of travellers who expect airlines to “offer the same level of personalisation as everyday retail they interact with”, said Henry Harteveldt, founder of Atmosphere Research Group, a consultancy focused on global travel.
Urging airlines to improve their flight shopping experiences by emulating successful retailers such as Amazon and Starbucks, whose sites offer rich product information, photos and videos, Harteveldt also advised greater and savvier use of the massive information that carriers have of passengers by delivering highly personalised offerings to fulfil as many travellers’ end-to-end needs and capture the maximum share of wallet.
Such a move will enable an airline to position itself as “a travel site, not just an airline site” to passengers, allowing it to differentiate from competitors, Harteveldt argued.
“We are at the point now where technology, the customer, and marketing and distribution all come together to support your ability to really be a complete retailer,” he stated. “We’ve got NDC (New Distribution Capability) now going; we’ve got companies that are certified level four or NDC at scale; and we’ve seen a huge amount of investment and effort by many airlines to participate in NDC and ONE Order… so a lot of the key obstacles have been removed or can be managed.”
Scaling up distribution of rich airline content But disruption appears not far off on the horizon. The long-term retailing agreements that airfare clearinghouse ATPCO recently entered into with Sabre and Amadeus signal a major transformation underway in flight shopping.
Through the ATPCO partnership, airlines’ so-called rich content – including photos, graphics and videos of the product offerings on board, say, legroom or meals in any fare class – will be funnelled into both GDSs’ various flight shopping interfaces and applications serving travel agencies, OTAs, corporate booking tools and other sellers. Both travel technology companies have also pledged to support ATPCO’s Next Generation Storefront (NGS) standard.
As well, Kayak has also signed a multi-year retailing deal with ATPCO to integrate all three Routehappy Rich Content types – Amenities, Universal Ticket Attributes, and Universal Product Attributes – for its portfolio of travel brands.
Such partnerships are a “catalyst” in the modernising of the flight shopping experience, pushing the distribution of rich content into the next level, said Robert Albert, EVP retailing at ATPCO and founder of Routehappy.
Since launching Routehappy in 2011, Albert has been urging airlines to address the differentiated and unbundled offerings that have mushroomed in the industry over the last decade before his venture was acquired by ATPCO in February 2018.
Airline retailing capabilities and distribution have been a perennial “chicken and egg problem”, insisted Albert. “Airlines weren’t committed to rich content as there weren’t places to put the rich content, and sales channels weren’t committed to rich content because there wasn’t a repository of rich content,” he noted. “We hope (both the Amadeus and Sabre deals) are going to inspire the whole industry to get much more serious basically because there are so many more places to put it out.”
Ludo Verheggen, director of global air content strategy at Amadeus, agreed: “Airline retailing until now was very much price driven. And what we need to make sure is that it really becomes value proposition driven, so that the airlines can really convey correctly the whole value that they are bringing – what’s included in the fare but also what’s on board the flight experience. And it’s clear today there are limitations when it comes to how we convey that flight experience to travel buyers.”
More efficient workflow for travel agents Besides enabling modern flight shopping at scale, another distinct advantage that the integration of ATPCO’s rich content through Sabre 360 platform is greater workflow efficiency for travel agents, said Rakesh Narayanan, vice president, regional general manager, South Asia and Pacific, Travel Solutions Airline Sales at Sabre, as agents no longer have to leave the Sabre interface to look up information on airlines’ websites or elsewhere and then come back.
“Earlier, it used to be through an API, and wherein every single request would have to come in and out of the system. A travel agent or website and OTA will go to RouteHappy/ATPCO for the content for the rich content, and to come to Sabre for another content,” Narayanan said.
“But now the agent just have to come to Sabre – the one pipe which is highly efficient and scalable, and where they will get the regular content plus rich content through the same pipe and the same interface. So that’s why it’s a huge leap forward for both the industry and both of us (Sabre and ATPCO).”
Furthermore, in an age where travellers are placing a premium on experiences, having access to such rich content will enable travel agents to play the role of consultants more effectively. Instead of a potential passenger having to visually imagine how products differ across airlines or classes when doing price comparisons, Narayanan has observed high-street travel agents “actually turning their screen around to show customers what exactly they’re investing into”.
Meanwhile, Sabre is currently working on pushing rich content distribution through APIs for OTAs, with “more progress and announcements coming in the next few months”, said Narayanan. “We’ll also integrate that into our passenger services, or CSS, the SabreSonic system. The agreement we have is a comprehensive one to cover every aspect of the distribution channels.”
The pace of rich airline merchandising adoption is only going to get quicker, insisted Albert. “One of the things that we’ve learned along the way is rich content is so much more complex than anyone realised at the beginning, and everybody has so much to do to make our technology work and transform flight shopping into the modern age… but we got a whole global interconnected industry that has to work together to change something, and it’s actually happened.”
But like most things related to airline retailing, industry players expect the integration to take some time before next-gen selling becomes a norm. “With NDC, the analogy was being made about the plumbing right now,” said Amadeus’ Verheggen. “I would say with rich content, the same is going to happen.”
