Articles tagged “Klook”

Here's a riddle: If Traveloka sells lifestyle services and AirAsia is not just an airline, what is an online travel agency? The industry will have to coin a new term since everyone is starting to sell more than just flights and hotels. Any suggestions?

For the first time, an Asian startup, Klook, is attracting the highest funding ever in tours and activities. For the last time, can skeptics of this travel sector please bow out?

GetYourGuide may close an approximately $300 million funding round this year with possible participation by new investors like SoftBank and Temasek. If true, investors would be betting that the attractions booking agency can continue to defy several assumptions about young travel companies.

A bigger chunk of online travel bookings will be made through mobile in Southeast Asia and players need to improve the user experience fast. Learn from Expedia, which has been anointed the guru of mobile in the region by a Google/Accenture study.

After low cost carriers, the next big thing that will change the way Asians travel could be rail. A rail-volution is in the air and online travel platforms want in. But it’s not that easy. Here’s why.

Hotel chains and tours and activities are converging again as Shangri-La Hotels & Resorts and Klook strike a partnership. The deal, following Marriott International’s stake in PlacePass last year, has its potential pitfalls but the upside could be huge for both parties if they can make it go smoothly.

A chunk of the Chinese market has reached maturity in just a few years when it took some Western markets decades to do the same thing. Now watch how destinations respond to more independent Chinese travelers.

Given its new lofty valuation of more than $1 billion, Klook has become too expensive for most online travel companies to justify as an acquisition. But would a possible IPO within a few years be successful?

Hong Kong-based Klook has selected the Americas as its first stop for expansion outside Asia. To beat the deeply entrenched competition, it will have to find partners that can adapt to the needs of Asian travelers.

Klook's rapid growth suggests that a growing number of Chinese and other Asian outbound travelers want to travel independently, instead of in groups, and thus book their activities a la carte. That portends a sea change in the travel industry.