Traveloka

Traveloka

Company type	Private
Industry	Travel, ticketing
Founded	February 2012 in Jakarta, Indonesia[1]
Founders	Ferry Unardi, Albert, Derianto Kusuma[2]
Headquarters	Jakarta, Indonesia , Indonesia
Areas served	Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Australia[3][4]
Key people	Ferry Unardi (CEO) Caesar Indra (President) [5]
Products	Online travel portal, ticket bookings, financial services
Number of employees	2,500 (2019[6])
Parent	Traveloka Holding Ltd[7]

PT Trinusa Travelindo, operating as Traveloka is an Indonesian technology company focused on travel and ticketing. Operating a services website of the same name and based out of Jakarta, Indonesia,^[8] Traveloka is active in six countries,^[4] and in 2022 remained the largest online travel app in Southeast Asia.^[9] Founded in 2012 as a travel search engine,^[1] it now also offers services such as attraction tickets, activities, transportation rentals, and restaurant vouchers.^[10] It also provides financial services such as credit^[2] and insurance.^[11] Classified as a unicorn company^[12] and regarded as functionally similar to Expedia,^[10] in 2022 it was valued approximately at US$3 billion.^[13]

History

Founding (2012-2013)

Traveloka was established in February 2012^[4][1] by three Indonesian software engineers: Ferry Unardi, Albert, and Derianto Kusuma.^[14] Unardi and Albert had met while studying computer science in the United States, while Unardi met Kusuma while both were interning at Microsoft.^[15] All three ultimately worked in Silicon Valley.^[16] Unardi, frequently encountering travel difficulties when visiting his hometown of Padang, came upon the idea of a website to ease travel logistics in Indonesia.^[14] As he had no business experience, he began an MBA program^[17] at Harvard Business School. However, in early 2012, the Indonesian tech market was attracting international investors^[15] and e-ticketing was becoming more popular,^[18] so Unardi dropped out early^[19][10] and the three founders^[10][19] moved to Jakarta and established Traveloka.^[17]

After an early iteration was completed in February 2012, Traveloka launched in September 2012 as a travel metasearch site,^[20] serving as both an aggregator and search engine for flights in Indonesia.^[17] In November 2012,^[20] the company raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from East Ventures.^[18] With Unardi serving as CEO and Kusuma as chief technology officer (CTO),^[6][21] they also implemented 24-hour customer service in multiple languages^[16] and moved from a metasearch model to a full online travel agency (OTA)^[22] and ticket reservation website.^[17] Also in September 2013, the company announced a series investment by Global Founders Capital.^[1] Redesigning the portal and relaunching^[15] in September 2013,^[20] Traveloka began allowing users to purchase flights using various payment methods,^[17] taking between a 10 to 15% commission on bookings.^[15]

Expansion (2014-2018)

Traveloka introduced hotel bookings^[23] in July 2014. It then launched apps for iOS and Android in August 2014,^[20] and by the end of the year, had 10 million visitors each month.^[15] In May 2015, comScore ranked Traveloka as Indonesia’s number one flight search and booking service.^[18] Traveloka first entered Thailand in 2015,^[16] and by September, it had partnerships in Southeast Asia with 33 hotels and airlines.^[15] The company expanded rapidly in 2016, opening regional offices in Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines^[12] and Vietnam.^[24] Train tickets and food features were added that year,^[23] as well as ticketing for Indonesian tourist attractions.^[25] In Traveloka's first public funding round since 2013, in July 2017 Traveloka raised $350 million from Global Founders Capital, GIC, the Qatar Investment Authority,^[10] and Expedia, which also became a minority investor.^[8] The investment valued Traveloka at over US$1 billion, making Traveloka a unicorn company.^[26] Funds were earmarked for developing machine learning and artificial intelligence,^[27] investments, and hiring more staff.^[25]

By August 2017, according to Reuters, Traveloka had incorporated "100,000 hotels, apartments and other forms of accommodation" in Southeast Asia into its booking options, and had partnerships with around 100 airlines.^[25] It added online check-ins in December 2017, as well as airport transportation services via a taxi company.^[20] In December 2018, the company acquired three online travel agencies: Pegipegi from Indonesia, Mytour from Vietnam, and Travelbook from the Philippines, all previously subsidiaries of Recruit Holdings in Japan – for $67 million.^[28] In May 2018, Traveloka launched a mobile app feature offering dining information.^[29] 2018 also oversaw the resignation of Kusuma from his role as Traveloka's chief technology officer, citing a "clash of aspirations".^[30]

New services (2019)

By 2019, Traveloka was one of four unicorns in Indonesia,^[31] as well as the largest online travel startup in Southeast Asia.^[32] Traveloka opened a research & development (R&D) center in Bangalore, India in January 2019.^[33] In March 2019, AirAsia permanently withdrew sales of its flights from Traveloka, citing Traveloka's lack of explanation for several AirAsia Indonesia flights that had been unlisted the month prior.^[34] By 2019, Traveloka had ventured into financial services for the first time.^[23] In 2019, it started a credit card scheme with Bank Rakyat Indonesia, marking the company's move into financial services.^[32]

In June 2019, Traveloka introduced a new lifestyle business division,^[35] branding the feature Traveloka Xperience.^[10][32] Initially available in Thailand,^[23] it allowed for searching and booking travel-related activities and lifestyle products.^[36] It also launched a home protection insurance plan as well as visa insurance coverage in Indonesia in 2019.^[36] Traveloka began listing villas and apartments to book in September 2019.^[37] By October 2019, it had launched its PayLater card with Bank Rakyat Indonesia.^[32] Traveloka also developed a shariah-compliant health insurance program called Bebas Handal for Muslim customers alongside Hong Kong-based FWD Group. Movie-booking in Thailand was also added in November 2019 through Major Cineplex.^[36] Also in 2019, Traveloka partnered with the Indonesian Tourism Ministry on the Wonderful Indonesia tourist marketing campaign,^[38] also collaborating with the Singapore Tourism Board to open trip kiosks in Singapore.^[39] Traveloka in 2019 had 2,500 staff members and 20 products, with around 50 million downloads of its app. That year, a survey of 1,204 Indonesian "millennials" showed that 79% used Traveloka regularly.^[6]

Pandemic and recent (2020-2023)

During the early months of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, Traveloka began experiencing surges in refund and rescheduling requests.^[40] With flight bookings dropping to essentially zero,^[41] in April 2020, Traveloka laid off 100 staff members^[40] and over the next half year, refunded around 150,000 flight tickets equating to $100 million.^[42] In response, the company began adding features such as its "Buy Now, Stay Later" feature^[30] to allow for flexible booking.^[41] To help restore its cash flow during the pandemic, its Xperience sub-brand was also used to host online activities like cooking classes with professional chefs.^[30] Traveloka also began advertising other online experiences and "flash sale livestreams," and began bundling flights with COVID-19 tests.^[43]

Through Traveloka Xperience, in June 2020, Traveloka began listing polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and rapid testing in Indonesia,^[44] booking around 600,000 people for vaccinations over the next year and a half.^[41] Also in June 2020, Traveloka started its Traveloka Clean Partners campaign to align with government health measures.^[45] A new funding round was completed in 2020 with the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) as a lead investor.^[46] Demand for travel accommodation was recovering by October 2020, according to Traveloka,^[42] and by the end of 2020, Traveloka's travel business had returned to profitability.^[11] After reports that Traveloka was considering a SPAC merger in the United States,^[47] Traveloka halted discussions over a SPAC IPO with Bridgetown Holdings in September 2021.^[48] In 2021, Fast Company named Traveloka one of its 100 Best Workplaces for Innovators^[49] in the International category.^[50] In January 2022, Traveloka remained the largest online travel start-up in Southeast Asia, and was valued at $3 billion.^[51] In September 2022 it raised USD$300m. In 2022 as well, Traveloka closed Traveloka Mart, Traveloka Send, and Traveloka Eats, all of which^[52] had been launched during its diversification of services during the pandemic.^[53] After appointing brand ambassadors,^[54][55] in April 2022, Accor properties in 13 countries were added to Traveloka's booking platform.^[5]

Website

Traveloka is a services and e-commerce site available in multiple languages. Classifying its products and services in the categories of travel, local services, and financial services,^[4] the app has been downloaded over 100 million times^[2] and has around 40 million monthly active users. It is claimed that the website lists around 150 airlines covering a total of 200,000 domestic and international flight routes. More than 2,500,000 hotels, villas, and guesthouses in 100 countries are also listed.^[10] According to Traveloka, it allows for searching and booking^[15] in areas such as transportation and lodging,^[10] and also provides lifestyle products and services, for example attraction tickets, activities, car rental, and restaurant vouchers.^[2]  Customer services are provided 24-7 in local languages. The platform allowed four methods of communication in 2017: a desktop portal, a mobile portal, iOS and Android applications, and direct calls.^[16]

In relation to financial services, it offers wealth management services, insurance,^[11] financing and credit. Other features in the Traveloka platform include the prebooking service Buy Now Stay Later, the live-streaming service LIVEstyle, the blogging platform Kampoeng Traveloka, and the multiplayer game Sodaloka.^[2]

See also

• List of unicorn startup companies
• List of Indonesian inventions and discoveries

References

External links