Joanna Liao

The company acts as a trading platform where travel agents can load their packages, search other agents, resell or buy directly from suppliers listed on the site. On the B2B side, it sources hotel inventory and tour packages and offers the content to customers through a B2C portal.

Owned by Creative Advances Technology, it started life in 2009 as SOTA (Standard Online Tourism Architecture) offering web solutions to travel agents in Malaysia and created the Virtual Travel Fair for the Malaysian Association of Tours & Travel Agents. In May 2012, it rebranded to SOTA (Smart Online Travel Assistant) to become a marketplace for tour packages and hotel stays.

“When we launched SOTA in 2009, our objective then was to attract more travel agents to bring their travel businesses online. Now that we have a solid participation from the travel industry, we want to move to the new phase of being able to strongly connect with the consumers in the growing travel market,” said Rohizam Md Yusoff, CEO of CAT at the time of the rebranding. The rebranding cost RM1 million and another million was allocated towards building the consumer brand.

It is clear however that building a consumer brand has its challenges and the company is focused on building up its B2B content and trading platform capabilities.

Currently, 50% of its content is Malaysia-based domestic packages but Joanna Liao (pictured above), chief marketing officer, said that in the last two months, the company has managed to penetrate new markets and was working with the ASEAN Hotel and Restaurant Association to build up hotel inventory to assist travel agents on the platform access room allotment and B2B rates.

“The market timing is right, there is growing interest in places like Myanmar and Vietnam,” said Liao.

Greg Duffell

Greg Duffell, recently appointed international president of Creative Advances Technology, which owns SOTA, said that the company’s goal was to become a trading platform for tour packages and hotel stays – an “Alibaba of travel”, referring to the world’s largest online B2B marketplace.

“Our main objective is to e-enable travel agents in the region. A lot of agents are not online and even if they are online, they do not have transactional ability. The conversation has also changed. In the past it was, do we have to go online? Now, it’s how do we go online. Agents are increasingly aware they need to have some form of online presence. The adoption rate is much faster now.”

SOTA, which stands for Smart Online Travel Assistant, provides them the tools to set up a website and payment gateways. “Agents can load packages on our platform, they can search other agents and they can resell or buy directly from suppliers,” said Liao.

Duffel likened SOTA.travel to a meta-search for tour packages. “Consumers can search our site for packages, but they are not buying from us, they buy from a travel agent and they can make a query via email with the agent.

“Travel agents are still the best at packaging, OTAs have not really cracked the packaging problem yet. And Malaysians still like to buy tour packages – transfers, theme parks, attractions.”

The site currently offers 4,500 travel packages and 100 hotels (mainly in Malaysia) with a total of 1,400 travel agents participating in the platform. It’s tried various revenue models going from enquiry fees to commissions but now it charges a platform fee of US$150 a month.