Being launched six months ago in Indonesia, Germany-based Trivago is currently aiming to level up its brand awareness in Indonesia this year. One of ways that it has done so far is by advertising on TV, and partnering with several local online travel agencies (OTA).

As a metasearch service provider, Trivago doesn’t serve direct hotel room booking. Instead, it partners with OTAs to provide customers with relevant results of hotels as well as their price.

So far, Trivago has partnered with some local OTAs, including Tiket.com and Nusatrip. These agencies complete the list of Trivago’s more than 200 global partners, not excluding Booking.com, Agoda, and Expedia. This year, Trivago expects to partner with many more local OTAs.

As Dininur Sartika, Trivago’s Country Development for Indonesia, told DailySocial, Indonesia is Trivago’s focus in Southeast Asia. Previously, Trivago has indeed penetrated the market in Thailand, malaysia, and Singapore. In Indonesia, Trivago must go head-to-head with Wego and HotelsCombined to win the market.

Dini stated that this year, her team looks to improve Trivago’s brand awareness by continuously advertising on TV, without undisclosing any target of revenue. Even though Trivago is an internet-based service, Dini believes that Indonesians are still influenced heavily by TV.

Though ads, Trivago looks to educate people to utilize metasearch to get the best deals when they go traveling, including to associate the word “hotel” to Trivago. To have better penetration, Trivago has been made available in Bahasa Indonesia and used Rupiah as one of its available currencies.

Dini revealed that at the moment, 60% of access that Trivago gets derive from mobile, from both mobile version and mobile app. This is obviously the reason why Trivago always update the performance of its app, which is available in iOS and Android version.