ITB Asia News 2019 Preview Edition

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
11
ASIA IS A
REGION IN
WHICH WE’RE
SEEING
CONTINUED
GROWTH AND IT
CONTINUES TO
BE A FOCUS
FOR OUR
BUSINESS.
Angel Llull
Mancas
Vice President and Managing Director,
Asia-Pacific, Booking,.com
The evolution of Booking.com
in APAC
Exclusive interview: Angel Llull Mancas, Vice President and Managing
Director, Asia-Pacific, Booking.com
The Dutch Online Travel Agency, Booking.com has been present
in the Asia-Pacific region for 11 years. In an interview with
Angel Llull Mancas, Vice President and Managing Director,
Asia-Pacific, Booking.com we asked him about the current
trends in online bookings in the region.
With increasing mobile penetration
globally and consumers in Asia
being at the forefront of all things
mobile, travellers are looking to
their mobile devices to help them
do more, see more and experience
more before, during and after
their trips. Today, more than 50%
of accommodation reservations
on Booking.com happen through
mobile devices. Intra-region travel
is also burgeoning with the influx
of low-cost carriers, simplified visa
processes and growth in supply.
That being said, we also see similar
online booking trends that transcend
the region. Globally, we continue to
see an increasing overlap between
business and leisure travel, with
people increasingly tying personal
travel into a business trip. We’re
also seeing a demand for more
unique experiences and the appetite
to explore different places to stay.
Which regions are emerging?
Asia is a region in which we’re seeing
continued growth and it continues
to be a focus for our business. It is
certainly a region with many unique
aspects and challenges. On the
one hand, you have markets such
as Japan, Singapore and Thailand,
with an extremely strong inbound
booker market and well-developed
tourism industries. There are also
markets that are just opening up to
tourists, like Myanmar, and markets
that are quite fragmented within
themselves such as Indonesia. It is
an extraordinary region with many
complexities and many amazing
destinations for visitors locally and
globally to experience.
How are you working in India?
India is an important market for
us where we see a lot of growth
potential. We opened our first office
in Mumbai in 2012 with just 4
employees, and we now have over
80 employees across 4 offices in
the country. We offer close to 45k
properties in the country, which
represents thousands of listings
across traditional hotels as well
as homes, apartments and other
types of unique places to stay. We
are a meaningful player today in the
market, with Booking.com having
grown at about 68 per cent in 2017-
18 in terms of supply.
You have been moving into the
home and room rental market.
How is that coming along?
What most people don’t realise
is that the first apartment on
Booking.com was listed in 2000,
before Airbnb ever even existed.
Through our rigorous A/B testing,
also known as bucket testing, we
learned early on that travellers want
options in one place. They may not
always want to stay in a home or in
a hotel, so showcasing our breadth
of offerings is what customers want.
Now, we see other sites following
suit. Today this is a big and very
important business for us. We have
seen over 3 billion guest arrivals at
Booking.com across all properties
since 2007, with 750M guest arrivals
in our alternative accommodations
segment alone since 2007. Booking.
com also doesn’t charge customer
fees. What we’re striving towards
is providing travellers with the
widest selection of offerings and
leveraging technologies like AI and
machine learning to narrow down
the options to help them make their
decisions.
How important is ITB Asia for you
as a platform for networking?
I always look forward to ITB Asia.
It’s a great moment to catch up with
many of our key business contacts,
but also to come together with
thought leaders from across the
industry, evaluate the trends that are
shaping the future of our business
and get inspired by the incredible
work that’s being done around Asia
and throughout the world
ITB ASIA NEWS • Thursday 10 October 2019