Singapore Airlines launches travel experience digital platform

In anticipation of looser border restrictions around the corner, Singapore Airlines launched a digital platform in June that aims to make time-consuming travel research more convenient.

Pelago is both an online magazine and booking portal that publishes listicles of suggested activities in a destination city and lets travelers reserve slots.

Photo credit: Pelago

The portal focuses on Singapore for now, where visitors can book anything from a beer-sampling experience for S$40 (US$30) to a two-hour Singapore Airlines’ flight simulator session for S$699 (US$517). Other destinations in the Asia Pacific are in the pipeline.

“The travel booking and itinerary management space can often be overwhelming for consumers,” Pelago’s CEO Siddharth Shanker told Tech in Asia. The platform, he says, would be a unified hub for discovering, planning, and booking different experiences.

The microbrewery tour is one of more than 200 featured experiences on Pelago. Attractions follow health protocols set by the city. / Photo credit: Pelago

While users can research destinations on their own with a few clicks, Shanker is banking on Singapore Airlines’ reputation and the convenience that the platform offers to draw eyeballs. It also has flexible cancellation and refund policies to accommodate customers’ itineraries.

The platform offers 200 curated experiences, filtered according to type and price range. All content, from attraction pages to articles, is produced by its in-house journalists.

Pelago maintains that they offer competitive prices, with a dedicated section for experiences available for under S$50 (US$37). Users can also earn and use Singapore Airlines’ KrisFlyer miles on the platform.

Currency converted from Singapore dollar to US dollar: US$1 = S$1.33