Farzana FattahSingapore based online travel portal, TripZilla, which offers the simplest way for users to find and book their travels, launches in Malaysia with my.TripZilla.com.
The Malaysian portal made its debut in mid-March with 69 travel agencies on board and over 3,000 plus packages and itineraries. It is aggregating travel deals from 13 daily deals site, all low cost carriers, major airlines, credit card companies and hotel chains.
In a Q+A session with WIT, Winnie Tan shares her views on the new Malaysian portal and the potential of Malaysia for start-ups. Below are excerpts from the interview.
Q: Why Malaysia? The country is somehow perceived as comparatively less IT savvy and (tech) sophisticated than countries such as Korea, Hong Kong or Singapore?
TripZilla’s users do not need to be very IT-savvy. In fact, they don’t even need to be travellers who will complete their bookings online. As long as they use the internet to search and browse for travel information, they are our target market. For example, they can use TripZilla to browse travel packages, and thereafter make a phone call to the travel agency to complete the purchase. This online-offline, multi-platform needs of buyers is rather unique to South East Asia, and is a niche that companies like TripZilla can fill better than the travel giants.
Statistically, Malaysia is an attractive market too with more than 17 million internet users currently. Web purchases are estimated to grow up to RM5 billion in 2014, with travel taking the biggest share of this spending (24%). With these trends and numbers in our favour, we are confident that Malaysia is a ready market for TripZilla.
Read the full interview at WIT.
