Indonesia’s Travelio lets Asian travelers name their own price for hotels

Travelio team

Earlier this week, a new player in hotel bookings launched in Jakarta named Travelio. With the slogan, “Your trip, your price,” the site lets consumers negotiate the price of the hotels they wish to book in Indonesia. The company was created under a subsidiary of Indonesia’s Surya Semesta Internusa, one of the largest publicly traded property, construction and hospitality companies in the archipelago. The corporate venture’s launch at the Gran Melia Hotel was even supported by Indonesia’s minister of tourism Arief Yahya.

Co-founders Furia Agustinus, Christina Suriadjaja, and Hendry Rusli released Travelio’s beta version in late January. The vision for the company is to bring the offline hotel negotiating experience online, and Travelio’s mission is to be the first stop for consumers looking for hotel deals in Indonesia, says Rusli, managing director.

Suriadjaja says the site benefits consumers first and foremost, as Travelios users can pick the hotel brand they prefer and then click “Negotiate Now” to enter a price they’re willing to pay per night.

Once they specify a price, one of three things will happen. If the price is too low, the user will receive an auto reject message, which means they must rethink their price. If the price is acceptable, the query will be auto approved.

The third scenario is a manual approve. This means that the price the user has specified is lower than what the hotel hopes for, but still within the realm of acceptability. If this is the case, the user must wait for 24 hours for the hotel to get back to them. Once the price is approved, users can pay through Travelio with credit cards, internet banking, or bank transfers.

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According to the co-founders, hotels benefit from the site because they can more easily secure non-refundable hotel bookings. They also get the flexibility to update the rate according to their occupancy, as well as a low commission rate for Travelio. The firm’s co-founders did not share details on the transaction cut Travelio collects from participating hotels. They also didn’t mention how many active users the site currently has following its beta period.

Travelio has received investment of an undisclosed amount from Surya Semesta Internusa. The co-founders claim the site has already collected 5,000 participating hotels in Asia after one and a half months of pre-launch traction efforts. Travelio’s hotels are spread out across Asia Pacific, present in countries including Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Macau, Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea.

In Indonesia, the site will compete with the firms like GoIndonesia, HotelQuickly, and PegiPegi.