Discova has formed a dedicated sales team who will focus on Asia both as a source and destination market, as it gears up to seize domestic and regional travel opportunities in the region.
The team located in various markets across Asia will be serving Discova’s partners and their travellers based in the region.
Andrew Turner, director of sales at Discova, said: “Discova is deeply rooted in Asia. We have been operating in Asia for over 25 years and have helped thousands of travellers from all around the world discover this amazing region. It is only natural that we are now expanding to serve partners and their travellers based in Asia. We believe Asia offers a great potential both from a domestic and regional tourism perspective.”
With domestic travel paving the way for tourism’s return, Discova has been expanding its product offering in key Asian markets including Thailand, Singapore, and Japan to meet growing domestic tourism demand.
For example in Singapore, Discova has launched a new graffiti tour, offering Singaporeans the opportunity to rediscover the trendy Kampong Glam neighbourhood. Visitors are taken to the street art of the area by local graffiti artists and invited to draw graffiti on designated walls.
“Even though we sometimes sell our products directly to domestic travellers like expats in Thailand, we are primarily a B2B business and as such, we are focusing on serving domestic travellers through our partners,” said Turner.
The newly appointed Asia sales team is also gearing up to seize intra-Asia tourism opportunities when borders reopen in the region.
Turner explained: “Before Covid hit, our intra-Asia travel business was growing, and we believe this trend will be amplified in a post-vaccine world. Asia-based travellers will most likely avoid long-distance trips and prioritise short-haul flights and close destinations they are already familiar with. We want to tap into this growing market working together with our Asia-based partners.”
Having organised programmes in partnership with local schools and universities in Asia for international students from Australia, Europe and the US, Discova is now expanding its educational travel offering to Asia-based international schools and universities for Asia-based students.
“Asia-based international schools and universities are looking for opportunities to participate in community development projects in the region as part of their students’ curriculum. Thanks to our long-standing relationships with our communities across Asia, we are able to respond directly to the needs of those educational organisations,” said Turner.
As well, Discova is expanding its offering for corporates, including employee incentive or employee engagement activities.
Turner explained: “With employees encouraged to work remotely, there is growing demand from corporates in the region for employee engagement initiatives or activities which will bring people back together. Each initiative is tailor-made; we often engage directly with the human resources department of the company to build the employee engagement activity based on their requirements.
“Our focus on domestic and intra-Asia travel is part of our long-term growth plan in the region. It is particularly exciting because it encourages us to create new products for customers who are particularly savvy, having first-hand knowledge of the destination and the region they live in. Our domestic and intra-Asia travel products are very inspiring and will certainly appeal to international travellers when borders reopen.”
A new live data intelligence dashboard launched by Tripadvisor will allow destination marketers to gauge travellers’ sentiment towards destinations and travel, in order to drive their recovery strategies.
Powered by Tourism Sentiment Index, the offering is part of Tripadvisor’s wider suite of data intelligence products for DMOs, known as the Tripadvisor Insights Platform. The live dashboard provides clients with essential word-of-mouth insights about destinations, combining Tripadvisor’s each and traveller behaviour insights with Tourism Sentiment Index’s sentiment technology.
The Tripadvisor Insights Platform is a collection of measurement and insights tools intended to help partners in the travel and tourism industry manage their media campaigns and overall recovery activities. The solutions use Tripadvisor’s wealth of user behaviour data to measure performance, uncover competitive insights and track how destinations, accommodations, attractions and restaurants are performing over time.
The new sentiment dashboard for DMOs uplevels the service offering of the Tripadvisor Insights Platform by providing clients with daily actionable intelligence, using insights from across 50 tourism touchpoints – including air access, accommodations and attractions. The dashboard’s analytics are drawn from real-time conversations, across half a million platforms, including Tripadvisor.
Sentiment towards destinations and travel contribute to an overall score that reveals a destination’s popularity versus competitors, enabling them to update campaigns, product offerings and messaging faster and more effectively.
The sentiment dashboard also includes a crisis analysis module that tracks the impact of the pandemic in locations around the world by revealing emotional reactions to categories such as health services, government and economics.
“Recovery in the wake of Covid-19 is key this year. The Tourism Sentiment Index will equip DMOs with critical information and actionable insights that will allow them to better understand their travellers and the global landscape, resulting in more targeted and strategic marketing and media placement decisions”, said Sarah Mathews, Group Head of Destination Marketing APAC at Tripadvisor.
“Being able to put the right message out to the right traveller at the right time will give DMOs an advantage in campaign planning and execution, all with the goal of bringing the world back to travel safely.”