The day I catch up with Angel Llull Mancas, the managing director for Booking.com, APAC, comes the news of the collapse of Thomas Cook Group, one of the most well-known brands in the history of travel. It is a shock yet not such a surprise, according to this analysis in Phocuswire.
“It shows you really need to develop and innovate as fast as you can,” said Mancas, who moved to Singapore a year ago to take up the role. “You have to keep up with new trends of the users, it’s crucial and key.
“That’s why APAC (Asia Pacific) is such a great place for Booking, not just because of the business we generate but it will help the company globally to develop for the future. New trends are being set here and it will push us to innovate at the pace we need to.”
Indeed, the past 12 months have moved at breakneck speed for Mancas, who started his seven-year career with Booking in Barcelona, and then took on responsibility for West US and LATAM before becoming senior regional director North America.
You can sense the pace of change as well as the customer trends he’s seeing has opened his eyes to how different the markets here are from what he’s seen. “In Europe, it’s usually desktop, search and then the rest. Here, it’s mobile and the first entry point is not search – it could be inspiration, social, somebody triggering you.”
He noted the leapfrogging to mobile had triggered different behaviours to e-commerce. “For example, the idea of superapps and that you can do anything in one app – that’s different from anywhere else.”
Another difference is the competitiveness, with Mancas saying, “It’s bigger and more intense here. Every country has its own local player, we don’t have that in other markets.”
Domestic growth outstripping international
Having said that, it is clear that Booking is holding its own in APAC and while international inbound business to the region is good, Mancas said the growth has been in domestic and intra-Asian business. “Domestic is growing faster than international,” he said. “That’s the biggest part of our bookings.”
In India, Mancas was quoted in a local media report as saying, “In the last three-four years, we have seen a huge spike in growth in domestic transactions. So basically, you can see a lot of Indian customers going to Indian destinations and using Booking.com. I am not allowed to give out exact percentages, but it is higher domestically than international.”
(Image credit: tchotaniaman/Getty Images)
One key takeaway personally has been “there is no such thing as APAC” and there can be no one blanket approach. “It’s many markets and every market is different from the other, and every market needs a different strategy – customer, tech and supply.”
As for whether this requires every market to have a local chief (such as China has with Marsha Ma), Mancas said, “As long as we are able to get product development localized – for example, how to deliver ryokans in Japan – it doesn’t matter what the organization looks like.”
Another has been how huge the potential is, indeed bigger than he had thought. “We are a very matured business in Australia, yet the potential is still very big. There are still lots of opportunities. The rates of Internet penetration, the new population of Gen Z emerging and the relative newness of our brand – lots of headroom for growth.”
Its partnership with Grab also went live in August in which Grab customers can now book hotels on Booking.com. “We are excited – it’s one of those partnerships that can bring value to the group.”
Testing “green labelling” of accommodation
That’s not to say APAC is not without its challenges. The day of our interview, Singapore is covered in haze, the second week residents have been choking on smoke and grit, an annual phenomenon which seems to defy solutions. And it’s hard to talk about travel without bringing up the subject – after all, we tell people to enjoy places when they travel but how do you enjoy when you are choking on smog?
Said Mancas, “Of course, the haze worries me. We are helping people to experience the world but there has to be a world to experience. Our industry and companies such as ours have to take some responsibility. That’s why we launched Booking Booster, it’s one of the biggest things we are doing.”
Booking Booster, a three-week, zero-equity accelerator programme and €2 million fund to support scale-ups to grow their sustainable tourism ventures, was launched in 2017 and each year 10 startups qualify. It is driven out of Amsterdam but given the high number of applicants and qualifying entries from Asia, I asked if it would make sense for the programme to be run out of the region.
“It’d be a good idea to contemplate,” said Mancas, “but what’s more important than where it is run from is what works best for it as a programme.”
Booking.com is also one of the partners behind Prince Harry’s initiative, Travalyst, a new global partnership aiming to encourage sustainable travel practices across the industry.
On the more tangible front, Mancas said Booking.com is looking at introducing an “eco-friendly” feature to its accommodation platform. “We are looking at how to display that in a better way. Now is that going to change things drastically? Probably not but we can help educate our partners and help those that are taking a step.
“Customers are demanding this feature and in a recent survey we did, 62% of the people interviewed said they would like to see a green label.”
Attractions/activities live in 25 cities in APAC
And as Booking works towards building out the platform for “the connected trip”, it has made live attractions and activities in 75 cities in APAC as well as transportation. “We are testing different ways to understand the different funnels, through machine learning and the data we have so that we can put it at the spot that you need those recommendations.”
It is also working towards real-time notifications although that feature is still not live in APAC.
As far as alternative accommodation is concerned, which now accounts for about 20% of total revenues, Mancas said the ratio was pretty similar in APAC and it’s growing faster than other sectors of accommodation.
Asked to articulate his vision for the “ideal connected trip”, he said, “It would be one platform that helps me to enjoy the full trip seamlessly without any type of barriers.”
Of course, that’s the vision every competitor is working towards but Mancas feels Booking has an unfair advantage. “Nobody is there yet, and nobody has our advantage of a big global audience, our way of AB testing and our ability to innovate.”
Note: Angel Llull Mancas will be speaking at WiT Singapore 2019 on October 14-16. Check out the programme here and get your ticket here.
• Featured image credit: Kerkez/Getty Images