More than a week ago, two major airlines disappeared from Traveloka. [Update]

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

(Update Nov. 7 2016: Citilink and Garuda flight tickets are back and can be purchased again through Traveloka. A spokesperson for the startup said the site began listing the two airlines  again about a week ago. It gave no further explanation as to what caused the disappearance.)

About a week ago, Traveloka customers noticed that tickets for two major Indonesian airlines were no longer available through the site.

Twitter user @ridwansyarif_ab noticed on the afternoon of October 12 that something was amiss.

Traveloka aggregates tickets from multiple airlines in the region, including those of Indonesian national airline Garuda and its subsidiary Citilink. It also offers online hotel booking and tour packages. Apart from those two airlines no longer showing up in search results, everything else appears to be working fine.

When Tech in Asia reached out to Traveloka after the first customer complaints surfaced, we were assured it was a temporary glitch. The issue would be resolved soon.

We checked back a few days later and got the same answer.

“Our team is already working so hard to recover the problem […] We don’t want our customers [to] be misled to think that we don’t offer Garuda anymore despite it being temporary glitch,” Traveloka co-founder and CEO Ferry Unardi told us at the end of last week.

A business feud?

The “temporary glitch” persists until now.

Sources in the industry say the reason for the missing tickets is a clash between Traveloka and Garuda.

According to this explanation, the state carrier froze the partnership after the online travel agent ran its Traveloka Online Travel Fair promotion earlier this month – right when Garuda also held a travel fair.

Traveloka’s promotion might have negatively affected Garuda’s own ticket sales, leading to the decision to boycott Traveloka, at least temporarily.

However, Garuda spokesperson Benny S. Butarbutar denies that clashing promotional activities have anything to do with it. “We serve two separate markets,” he told Tech in Asia a few days ago.