Northstar

4 | www.travelweekly-asia.com INDUSTRY VOICES 10 CONTENTS 3 TALKING POINT Letting the train take the strain 6 TECH TALKING Facing up to the future with biometrics 14 DESTINATION: LOS ANGELES Not just home to Hollywood stars 16 ATTRACTION It's always sunny-side up on Sentosa 18 TRAVEL AGENTS Going the distance with technology 20 HOSPITALITY Marriott lays down a marker in Asia Pacific 23 BEST OF GLOBAL WRAP WIT launches indie event to champion creators of local experiences Clockwise from top: The Skyline Studio at One Farrer Hotel & Spa; sunset at Redang Island, Malaysia; Portofino Riviera. 8 12 Flying high, opening skies The APAC airline and tourism industry is witnessing an unprecedented change - from low- cost carriers (LCCs) offering long- haul flights to the changes in travel booking behaviour of travellers brought about by technological developments – that is continuing to fuel growth in the industry with global online travel sales projected to grow to US$755.94 billion in 2019. LCCs are evolving and adapting their services to compete with full- service carriers and we are seeing airlines such as Scoot raising the bar by offering its third long-haul route this year. In our research, what is interesting and crucial for the APAC carriers to know is, for destinations in APAC, 70% of travellers book LCCs within an hour of search as compared to 50% of travellers on full-service carriers. LCCs get booked faster than full- service carriers as a huge 90% of bookings are done within the first two hours of search. Effective marketing campaigns require the right kind of insights as well as the ability to react in real time to those insights. as a result of the digital revolution in APAC. Globally, there is a noticeable YoY increase in mobile- web searches and bookings. Our data shows close to half (40%) of all travel searches in Asia for Q4 2017 were conducted on mobile compared to only a quarter (25%) in the US. The high volume of mobile activity in Asia shows that this region is truly a mobile-first culture when it comes to travel bookings. This is a trend that is only going to escalate in the coming years. The proliferation of devices has certainly played a contributing factor to the increasing complexity of the traveller's path to purchase. Travel booking behaviour varies substantially, not just from person to person, but even from trip to trip. Taking a closer look at one of our anonymous user's paths to purchase, we discovered that traveller completed as many as 162 touch points both at home and in- destination. What is interesting is this b-leisure traveller only started planning for his leisure trip to Kuala Lumpur while on his business trip in Singapore. Marketers can no longer base their strategies on averages or demographics but instead, need to deliver personalised content via the right device at the right time, as a traveller may be a last-minute booker on one occasion but behave entirely differently on another. Despite being the world's strongest aviation market, intense competition among the APAC carriers will continue to put pressure on passenger yields. Competition demands constant focus on productivity improvements and reducing costs. Implementing the right marketing strategy coupled with innovation in both services and business models is paramount to the APAC carriers moving forward, opening skies. Russell Young has worked in the online travel and tourism industry for over 16 years. As APAC managing director, he leads Sojern's APAC sales and account teams, expanding Sojern's footprint in the region and developing global travel partnerships. Prior to joining Sojern, he was the media director for lastminute. com. Another aspect that airlines and travel marketers cannot afford to overlook is the influence of and change in behavior of travellers "For destinations in APAC, 70% of travellers book LCCs within an hour of search as compared to 50% of travellers on full- service carriers."

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