Ticketing platform GlobalTix wants to ensure tour operators don’t get left behind

The tourism-ticketing business has gone through massive changes within a short time. Nowadays, customers expect that they can book tickets for activities or events online or via mobile, redeem their passes right at the venues, and more.

In recent years, fast-expanding business-to-consumer online travel agencies (OTAs) such as Klook and Traveloka have quickly brought these in-demand add-ons to customers. Travelers can immediately book e-tickets for various activities in their destinations via the OTAs’ platforms, which they then present upon entrance.

But the so-called little guys – the organizers of these tours and activities – still use old, on-premise ticketing systems to process bookings. Or worse, they manually issue tickets to customers and ask them to pick them up on site. These paper tickets are also easily lost or damaged.

Chee Chong Chan, CEO (left), and Chee Kong Chan, COO / Photo credit: GlobalTix

The need for them to upgrade is urgent. According to travel intelligence platform Skift, while the global tours and activities market is worth an estimated US$150 billion in annual value and predicted to grow 9% per year, 80% of all tour and activity bookings are still done offline.

Meanwhile, only 13% of bookings are done through OTAs with real-time booking connectivity.

Left behind no longer

Seven years ago, Chee Chong Chan was also thinking about how these operators are getting left behind. By that time, the travel and tourism executive had already acquired extensive regional experience at SilkAir and Singapore Airlines.

He had followed his former boss to Sentosa Development Corporation, the Singapore government body that manages tourist destination Sentosa Island. When he transferred jobs, however, he quickly realized that while hotels and airlines had all moved to e-tickets, that wasn’t the case with many travel attractions.

“When I was in Sentosa, everything was in physical tickets, and travel agents had to send their runners to collect those physical tickets,” Chee Chong recalls. “That’s when I thought of the opportunity – there’s a better way of doing it.”

He founded GlobalTix in 2013 and started work on the first version of the fledgling company’s main product. Along the way, he got his older brother Chee Kong Chan on board as co-founder and chief operating officer, and GlobalTix took on its first clients.

Today, the Singapore-based company offers a ticketing system for Asian tour companies and tourist attraction owners. They can sell their tickets and tour bundles through GlobalTix’s recently launched e-ticketing solution as well as manage their offers, sales figures, and market insights for every channel they sell on.

Among its current clients are well-known brands and destinations such as Singapore Airlines and Marina Bay Sands as well as Hong Kong Disneyland and Malaysia’s Escape Theme Park and Sunway Lagoon. GlobalTix also handles e-ticketing for KidZania in Singapore and Bangkok.

Customers can also sell through GlobalTix’s partner OTAs. The startup now showcases over 80,000 products and works with more than 2,000 tour operators – mostly smaller businesses across countries like Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Malaysia.

Signing on bigger clients

Breaking even