Klook just celebrated its eight birthday – congratulations! Looking back, are you happy with how far the company has come? Would you have done anything differently?
We have experienced the most challenging time in our history at the peak of the pandemic, and are finally seeing it in the rear-view mirror. We’re ecstatic to see that travel interest remains high, and that has helped contribute to our robust business performance as a testament to our strength and resilience of the industry.
We managed to pivot our business at the height of the pandemic by focusing on domestic travel with expanded local offerings, which has proven successful to date. We’ve just witnessed one of our strongest quarters with over 300 per cent quarter-on-quarter growth, even before North Asia reopened its borders, and have exceeded pre-pandemic revenue in many of our markets.
Where do you see Klook in the next five years?
As a travel and experiences platform, we see ourselves strengthening our expertise and diving deeper in the experiences space to bring joy to our customers. Through creating new things-to-do, exclusive Klook experiences, and curating interesting combinations, we aim to provide more holistic offerings for our customers.
As a technology platform, we’re also looking at building better integration for a more seamless experience. We’re investing in connectivity and expanding our team to better service travel operators in the region, strengthening our supply position to better serve our customers and distribution partners who work closely with us, such as Booking.com.
There’s talk about a recession next year. What challenges do you foresee in the near future?
One headwind we can expect in the longer term is a shift in international travel, especially given global inflation and fluctuating strengths of currencies. There is a wave of revenge travel happening right now, as many travellers are choosing to spend on trips as they’ve not travelled in the last few years due to the pandemic.
However, after this initial excitement, travel might be reined in gradually, with travellers perhaps looking towards closer and more affordable destinations instead of further locations. Within Asia, we’re still anticipating high cross-border travel, but it may decrease when we look beyond Asia.
We expect travellers to depend on us even more than before, especially when they look for value. We want to become their preferred end-to-end travel and leisure platform, with a seamless process of discovering and booking experiences for their trips.
What other partnerships is Klook working on currently, and what B2B efforts does Klook have up its sleeve?
We are not able to disclose any ongoing discussions until they are inked. However, we are constantly exploring partnership opportunities to enhance our verticals – in experiences, mobility and hotels – that will open new doors for our merchants and connect them with a wider customer base globally, such as through our partnership with Booking.com.
On the B2B front, our aim is to help merchants scale and transform their business more quickly through our network, in order to better capture the travel demand.
We have also been collaborating with tourism boards on multifaceted partnerships across various regions and markets. Among our most recent partnerships are those with the Singapore Tourism Board, Tourism Authority of Thailand, Korea Tourism Organization, and Tourism Australia.
How is Klook planning to gain more ground in the competitive OTA space?
We have introduced new platform features for our customers such as the re-engineered destination discovery feed powered by our repository of over seven million verified user reviews. This lets us have the ability to look into expanding into other verticals and build a full spectrum of services such as hotels, car rentals, and insurance for our travellers.
To let our customers achieve a more holistic travel experience, we also addressed every touch point in their journey. For example, we were the first travel player to introduce a full suite of travel-related insurance on a multi-market level, and provided one of the most extensive car rental and mobility product ranges across Asia-Pacific to support our customers’ travels.
How is Klook working to bridge the gap between merchants and consumers better?
We recognise that not all merchants can offer customer service in multiple languages around the clock, and we are here to bridge that gap and make the experience more seamless and convenient. During the past couple of years, due to improved efficiencies and automation, we have managed to improve customer service compared to pre-Covid levels.
We believe that there needs to be more education on the process, in order for the merchants to meet expectations and provide quality service across our destinations. We prioritise delivering this service based on rigorous standards, from screening merchants to curating activities and packages. We help and guide merchants who may struggle initially, and merchants who fail repeatedly will be delisted.
We also have boots on the ground, with our own Klook staff (Klookers) testing and reviewing these activities first-hand, to ensure that we can inspire and enable moments of joy for our customers.
What is Klook’s travel outlook for 2023?
Travel is looking to be in full force in 2023, given the recent reopenings in North Asia that are driving demand through the roof. We have seen heightened interest for destinations like Japan, where platform searches have steadily increased ever since the reopening announcements. We can already see buzz and excitement surrounding travel going into 2023, and there will be more to come.
Also, as we welcome cross-border travel back, we cannot forget about domestic tourism. It is definitely here to stay, and has opened up a new frontier for us to thrive in. Our efforts in domestic tourism have meant that beyond growing the variety of experiences for locals, we have also done the same for international tourists when they visit destinations. This focus on carving out these hyper-local activities line up with our strategy of using domestic travel as our second engine of growth, and develop this area alongside cross-border travel.
Based in Bangkok, he joins Minor Hotels after 32 years with Hilton Hotels, where he previously served in the same capacity overseeing the group’s Arabian Peninsula and Turkey region.
Indonesia tourism villages are enjoying increased attention, as travellers are drawn to peaceful attractions, found a new Google trends report.
According to Google data, online searches for such villages in Indonesia rose by 68 per cent between September 2021 and August 2022 when contrasted against the same period in 2020/2021.
Vania Anindiar, industry analyst at Google Indonesia, explained: “There is an interest in tourist attractions that are quieter, more relaxed, more peaceful, and without too many famous tourist attractions. (Google) users are looking for is a place to hide.”
Google also found a spike in search words combining ‘yoga’ and ‘meditation’ with ‘tourism villages’, noted Anindiar.
This trend shows that efforts to develop and promote tourism villages by the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy (MoTCE) have paid off.
Sandiaga Uno, Indonesia’s minister of tourism and creative economy, said tourism villages have become a world trend, as they offer an authentic holiday experience in a relaxed and healthy environment.
The MoTCE recently held the 2022 Indonesian Tourism Village Award, which selected 50 best villages out of 3,416 participating villages throughout the country. The shortlist contains villages that offer varied tourist attractions, ranging from religious and culture to ecotourism and agro-tourism draws.
Some tourism villages told TTG Asia that there have indeed been busier and more rewarding days.
Rudi Riono, head of Bugisan’s Travel Awareness Group which manages the Bugisan Tourism Village of Klaten in Central Java, said both the number of visitors and revenue obtained by the surrounding community have grown by 20 per cent. Domestic arrivals to his village in 2021 totalled 18,818, but January to September 2022 brought far more – 52,522 domestic tourists and 1,009 from outside of Indonesia.
He said tourists had either booked through travel companies or directly with his village. Of those from travel companies, most were students and tourists from overseas, with some being locals.
Penglipuran Bali Tourism Village also reported a significant increase in arrivals. In 2021, the village welcomed 565 international visitors and 146,144 domestic visitors. As of September 2022, there were 29,294 international visitors and 374,472 from across Indonesia, shared I Wayan Sumiarsa, general manager of Penglipuran Bali Tourism Village.
He noted that travel agents were the key drivers of business, as 75 per cent of visitors came through that channel.