When was the last time you reserved a hotel room by phone? Unless your office has special discount privilege on certain hotels, online hotel reservation is probably your best option. You can find out and confirm room rates as well as do a comparison with other hotels in just a few clicks.
There is one thing I quoted from Rusdi Kirana, Lion Air CEO, on the controversial agreement to buy Boing 737. It said that the middle class in Indonesia is increasing in numbers. It influences the drastic growth of traveling desire. Automatically, the need of hotels as the accommodation and its easy way to reserve is a must.
Lately, we got the news that supports the statement. There are more and more online local reservations growing. Besides wego that launched its Indonesian version web, there is also tiket.com that held soft launching and promotes its giveaway program. There is another new site that was planned to launch in November 2011, it’s Go Indonesia from KHI, however we still don’t get the information that they have opened their service although it is already December.
Besides new websites launching, we also got information about acquisition. As cited from Web In Travel, it is said that Rajakamar.com has announced that they acquired MG Holiday service. Different from Rajakamar and similar services that do B2C business, MG Holiday is the B2B player. The involvement of Rajakamar on the B2B business is to protect the room availability, especially in the peak season. The MG Holiday owner, Eddy Yeo and Raymond will be the shareholder of Rajakamar and still have key position in the company.
Besides acquiring MG Holiday, Rajakamar also give the CEO position to a veteran on this industry, Scott Blume, who was the Travelocity Asia Pasific and ZUJI director. The step taken by Scoot as Rajakamar CEO is redesigning the website that will be launched next few months. Besides, Scott will also increase the promotion by using social media.
Still from Web in Travel, Rajakamar now has information about 1800 hotels in 135 cities in Indonesia. Other than that, the shareholders of Rajakamar have already committed to invest $20 million in next five years to develop the technology and its partnership. Rajakamar was established by three big players in this business. They are Panorama Group, Dwidaya Tour and Travel, also Smailing Tours.
With the big Indonesian economics potential and the high costumers’ interest to use this service, it seems that in the next few years, the players on this field will increase accordingly to the business growth for about 20-50% each year.