Flamingo Offers Fun, Curated Travel Experiences in Indonesia

Flamingo is a startup that brands itself as an online travel service ready to offer you fun and interesting experiences and packages. Founded by Bernardus Sumartok, who after years managing the digital side in a corporate environment is now turning to the dark side. Or, the “fun side” as we call it here. The Flamingo.co.id service is currently in beta and was launched yesterday at Hong Kong Cafe, Jakarta.

The company with the pink bird, Flamingo, simply helps you by listing curated packages which offer unique travel experiences. Travellers can choose by using the filter “by interest” on the site, or they can select a place or a spot based on a specific activity, for example snorkelling off Komodo Island, camping in Raja Ampat, and so on. Compared to conventional travel agents, Flamingo claims that it also offers flexibility in the numbers of people in a tour group, which can be as few as five. To help travellers feel even more comfortable and to support the local community, Flamingo also works with local guides in every destination it covers.

Bernardus Sumartok, CEO and founder of Flamingo, adds:

Up to the end of 2011 in Indonesia, we have more than 30,000 travel agents. But from that number, we only have a few online travel agents. We use local guides so that our users can get the best and unforgettable experience which they will bring back home. We also have reviews which help even new travellers access full information about a destination and plan a great travelling time.

With this launch, Flamingo is working together with GantiBaju (the founder of which we interviewed earlier today!) to create a marketing campaign based around a T-shirt design competition. It takes “fun experiences in your city” as its theme, and runs July 17th through to August 7th. The startup hopes this competition can be one of the ways it promotes local destinations. Three winners will get a chance to travel to Sabang with the Flamingo team.

The travel industry is one of the biggest industries in Indonesia that is waiting to be disrupted – and we have seen quite a few local startups that are trying to do just that, such as PegiPegi. Flamingo will go head to head with Valadoo, which received investment from Singapore’s Wego and relaunched just a few days ago, and also there are new players like Burufly. Competition is in fact great for the ecosystem and I can’t wait to try each and every one of them.