Indonesian hotels taking bookings into their own hands

Singapore – More hotels in Indonesia, especially the independent hotels and local hotel chains, are gearing up their systems to handle direct bookings rather than depend on intermediaries to market and sell their products.

FASTBOOKING, a leading e-commerce solutions company for hotels, has seen an uptake of mobile bookings as well.

“More and more, hoteliers in Indonesia realise the importance of not depending too heavily on intermediaries and to bring down distribution costs. One sure way of doing that is to develop an effective direct distribution and booking strategy,” said Pierre-Charles Grob, Managing Director of FASTBOOKING in Asia.

FASTBOOKING also helps hotels penetrate the market through various platforms including mobile. The trend towards mobile bookings has grown exponentially in line with the growing number of smartphone users in Indonesia. There were 26.3 million users in 2012 but in 2015, it had more than doubled to 55.4 million.

In January this year, prominent Sumatra hotel chain ZURI Hotel Management (ZHM), with 16 hotels, signed on FASTBOOKING as its technology partner to develop its website with fully responsive e-commerce functionalities, and develop its digital sales and marketing strategy.

“Bookings through our website were small when we begun, and we have been anxious to develop a strong direct booking channel. FASTBOOKING has a good track record of being able to help smaller, independent chains like ours generate healthy online revenues, and we are now looking to them to turn up our e-commerce fortunes around,” said Mr. Diaz Kurniawan, Executive Director of Zuri Hotel Management.

Grob said FASTBOOKING is expanding quickly in Indonesia, with local offices now in Jakarta and Bali.

“Our new contract with Zuri Hotels puts us on a strong footing as we move into secondary cities beyond Jakarta and Bali. As our business grows, we will also boost our local teams to ensure our clients have the quickest access to support. The online world works dynamically and quickly and we understand the importance of having a local team for support,” said Grob.

FASTBOOKING is also the e-commerce and distribution provider for Sun Island Bali and Plataran Hotels and Resorts in Indonesia.