Expedia, Agoda, Traveloka, Ixigo on opportunities and challenges post-COVID

Redesigning the travel product for a local audience, developing new customer acquisition strategies, consolidation and dealing with Google – those were among the topics discussed Thursday by online travel leaders during two panel discussions at WebinTravel Travel Zero.0.

Speaking with WebinTravel founder and editor Yeoh Siew Hoon, Expedia Group president of travel partners Cyril Ranque says travel recovery will require governments to work together to create consistent protocols with speedy COVID-19 testing “so the 90% [of people] that are not sick get a free pass” that will open up more international travel.

“If we rely only on domestic, we have an industry that works on only half of its cylinders, maybe less,” Ranque says.

Asked whether they expect to see more consolidation and contraction in the industry, both Ranque and Agoda CEO John Brown say yes.

Brown says it’s natural that when valuations go down, some larger players will “see bargains” they want to pick up, but he also believes healthy competition is here to stay.

“The circle of life and of death unfortunately in online travel is very much alive and well. That’s obviously the way that it should be,” Brown says.

“[But] we do well when we have more competitors in the industry. We do better by our customers,” Brown says.

Ranque agrees, saying the smaller players are critical ingredients to maintaining “the richness of the industry.”

“If we end up with an industry that has half the players as it had before, then we are in bad shape. The product itself that we offer to customers becomes less interesting, it lacks diversity, it lacks opportunity,” Ranque says.

Personalized service, localized products

When asked how OTAs can offer consumers a better proposition than Google, which is regularly adding new travel products, Brown says it comes down to customer service.

“Google does a couple of great things at scale, but a lot of the personal bespoke service that you need as a customer and that you also need as a hotel is only something your friendly neighborhood OTA is going to be able to offer,” he says.

“And that’s what we are in the market doing day after day. And that’s the one thing that Google has been unwilling or unable to do.”

In an earlier panel discussion, Ixigo co-founder and CEO Aloke Bajpai and Traveloka chief marketing officer Christian Suwarna both say they are seeing traction in providing that type of personalized service and products for domestic travelers. 

Bajpai says in 2019, Ixigo launched its app in eight Indian languages to be able to serve users across the country, and that strategy is paying off.

“Almost 65% of our users now come from tier two, three and four towns,” he says.

“What we are seeing is that that part of the market is actually bouncing back much faster than the tier one towns because there is a lot of utility travel, a lot of essential travel to keep the economy up and running.”

Suwarna says Traveloka is focusing on its “greatest strength,” - its inventory of more than one million accommodations of all types, across cities of all sizes. And the Indonesian OTA, where Suwarna is also CEO of Traveloka Experience, has added very locally focused experiences with suppliers such as neighborhood restaurants and children’s playgrounds.

And with travel volume down, Suwarna says the company is now focusing on strengthening its relationship with past customers rather than initiating costly acquisition campaigns – although it secured $250 million in late July.

“We realize that, now that we are spending more thriftily and more carefully, we have been acquiring and serving millions of customers in the past, and I think we could do better at engaging them,” he says.

“I think in this circumstance like today we can rely back on our technology to invigorate those relationships with good CRM and many of our own media assets.”

Bajpai says Ixigo has never had a big marketing budget, so it has learned to be creative. 

In recent years the company has gained attention for its humorous marketing videos – including one designed like a Super Mario video game to explain COVID travel policies. Bajpai says that strategy of creating entertaining but informative video content has helped the Indian OTA remain relevant in the mind of consumers even if they are not traveling.

“Our insight there is that today you get more reach within 24 hours on social media if you have viral content than you can buy on TV after spending even $2 million for the day,” Bajpai says.