This adventure booking site wants to address the English language gap in Indonesia

Gogonesia is an online booking system that lets users book adventures and day trip tours in Indonesia. Melieyana Tjioe, the site’s 28-year-old founder and general manager, says she aims to promote Indonesian tourism by making the way people book activities easier and more accessible.

“Most people will book everything in advance […] and the next thing that they want to book after flights and hotels are activities,” Tjioe explains. “People still need to contact each tour operator simply to get the product information and to list out their prices one by one. Information is available in Indonesian but not so much in English.”

Tjioe earned a Master’s in commerce and business strategy from the University of New South Wales. She then worked for three years in Sydney at BlackRock investment management solutions and Servcorp – a virtual offices company – before returning to Indonesia in 2012.

The idea for Gogonesia came to her when she was living in Australia, where she spent her free time bungee jumping, skydiving, and canyoning with friends. The problem that needed to be solved became clear when her friends asked her if there was a website in Indonesia to book adventure trips similar to Booking.com. Tjioe says she wants to build Gogonesia in Indonesia before the local market becomes overly saturated in the years to come.

Tjioe cites Valadoo as one of her direct domestic competitors. The Bali-based site was recently acquired by Wego before merging with Burufly. She also mentions Jajalindo as a previously formidable competitor, a site similar to Gogonesia that was backed by East Ventures before shutting its doors in January (Full disclosure: East Ventures also invests in Tech in Asia. See our ethics page here).

See: Tripvisto wants more Indonesians take on tours, gets seed funding from East Ventures

Gogonesia launched in January 2013, and is now approaching the two-year mark. However, the site seems to just now be gaining traction and local media attention. While it caters to both local and foreign tourists (with English and Bahasa Indonesia language buttons on the homepage), Tjioe admits that the real challenge lies in the local demand. “[Locals are] more into travelling overseas rather than doing things or travelling around Indonesia. Activity depends heavily on the flights, hotels and infrastructure. We received more bookings and better feedback on the natural attractions from international people than from Indonesians. The traditional booking method is deeply rooted in the local culture.”

Tjioe claims Gogonesia gauges user activity via the number of unique visitors who have “performed some action on the site.” Without disclosing a specific number of registered users, she says Gogonesia has “not so many yet because some customers are actually offline or one-time buyers from overseas.”

Gogonesia earns revenue by charging a commission to its participating tour operators. Tjioe says the percentage depends on the specific agreement Gogonesia has with each operator. With such a case-by-case business approach, Gogonesia also has more room to offer special discounts to customers.

Tjioe’s vision for Gogonesia is a simple online booking platform for users to quickly find and book the most competitive experience on the market. Last week, Ideabox named Gogonesia as one of its 18 finalists to be considered for the second cohort of its accelerator program. Tjioe and the Gogonesia team have been invited to appear at Ideabox’s bootcamp event in Jakarta on September 13 and 14.