| IN SINGAPORE, PEOPLE ARE less keen to spend hours browsing for deals at half-yearly travel fairs, which have seen attendance fall in recent years. AsiaTravel.com is now pioneering Singapore's first online travel fair, in conjunction with DBS Bank. For the millions of DBS and POSB credit card holders, the 13-day fair (http://asiatravel.com/dbstravel) which started on Feb 23 and ends on Mar 6 offers over 8 million travel products worldwide. Its features include: √ Support by round-the-clock customer service hot lines and live chat, √ DBS-sponsored gifts such as luggage, √ Online games and contests to make every purchase just as fun and rewarding. |
Fred Seow, Senior Vice President Marketing & B2B of Asiatravel said: "We believe the application of technology allows consumers to shop at their convenience, provides instant confirmation for last minute purchases and can take place over a longer duration without causing additional resources like manpower, rental and so forth for travel suppliers.
"We are appreciative of the many travel suppliers who supported this initiative with special rates and prizes. We believe this might be the most appropriate format for future travel fairs and we intend to pursue this direction in countries like China, India, Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand.”
To Boh Tuang Poh, executive chairman of AsiaTravel.com Holdings, the virtual travel fair is one of the first fruits from the company's multi-year investments in upping its game.
"We have invested heavily over the years and are now ready to ramp up revenue quickly through our multi-channel distribution positioning. The travel fair is one of the programs under the B2B2C channel.
"Most competitors are single travel product vertical players. We are now a horizontal player with multi-products, multi-platforms and multi-channel distribution."
This can be illustrated as follows:
There's another exciting growth phase to come for AsiaTravel.com. Check out: ASIATRAVEL.COM: No takeover but China investor to pour in S$100 m