It’s interesting how the online travel market in Indonesia is evolving. One thing’s for sure, the competition has intensified since the first WIT Indonesia last year – you could even say it’s gotten vicious, as more players enter the market and compete not only for customers but staff.

Poaching is rife. Salaries particularly of developers are rising. We were told one reason companies were reluctant to send their best staff to attend events such as WIT was because they feared them being poached – ah, what logic.

So on the one hand, you have the new start-ups such as Nusatrip.com, tiket.com and traveloka.com who’ve got no travel background trying to disrupt the status quo and on the other, you’ve got companies such as Ezytravel, RajaKamar and BookPanorama, backed by Indonesia’s Big Three in travel – Dwidaya, Panorama and Smailing.

Nusatrip, launched a year ago and claiming to be Indonesia’s first complete online travel agent, is seeing strong growth, said Hans Ebenhahn (left in picture), CEO and it’s determined to be a 100% online play. “Too costly,” he said of a hybrid model, when posed the question by Fritz Demopoulos (left), co-founder of Qunar, who moderated the “Status Quo Challengers” panel.

Ebenhahn built Nusatrip on the promise of “where people can buy flights and hotels anywhere, anytime”. Online payment is becoming a reality in Indonesia, he said and at the time of its launch, Nusatrip said it supported ATM payment with 77 banks in the country.

Traveloka, which pivoted from meta to an OTA a few months after its launch, is also sticking to a pure online play with CEO Ferry Unardi (below, right) saying it was the only way to go, cost-wise and convenience-wise.

And while mobile traffic is rising, conversions drop by up to three times on mobile devices, Ebenhahn added. “Mobile is what you do to compare prices but people don’t buy as yet.”

Gaery Undarsa, managing director of tiket.com, one of the earlier starters – it launched two-and-a-half years ago – said 2013 was a breakthrough year for the company in online bookings as Indonesians gain more confidence in paying online.

While it still supports a hybrid model, Undarsa said the market was moving very fast and although mobile was not supporting conversions currently, the message that emerged from WIT Indonesia was clear – things could change overnight with a young, social and mobile customer segment emerging.

Meanwhile, the companies, backed by legacy power, say they benefit from their parents’ domination of the market – and certainly they do in terms of access to content and inventory – but they may be hampered by the ability to move fast and execute. 

Eric Tjetjep, founder of Ezytravel, backed by Dwidaya, is a believer in the hybrid model, and feels Indonesian customers still want the personal touch when booking travel.

BookPanorama, the newest online play by the Panorama group, wants to achieve 50% of revenues from online by 2017, said general manager Hans Tjandra (left in picture).

BookPanorama, a pure hotel service, is Panorama’s third online play by the group, after Rajakamar.com (also a hotel site which is its partnership with Dwidaya and Smailing Tours) and Travelicious.co.id, a daily deals portal.

Panorama has reportedly spent US$2 million on the initial phase of the business. A study by Bookpanorama.com estimates that 80 million room nights were booked by Indonesians in 2012, and the figure is expected to top 150 million in the next five years.

Tjandra believes the new platform offers a new concept to travellers who can now delay payments and change or cancel their reservation dates without additional fees.

“We are born from a simple idea ‘why should consumers need to pay in advance for a service that they have not used?’.

“This business model prioritizes customer satisfaction and we hope it will become a new benchmark in hotel booking for the future.”

So of these players, who could emerge the Ctrip or the MakeMyTrip of Indonesia? Demopoulos says this question may not be relevant for Indonesia, given the pace at which things are moving and changing. “A new model may emerge and disrupt the status quo,” he said.

Take what’s happening in China – a proposed merger between Qunar and Ctrip could potentially create the world’s largest OTA and while the Ctrip hybrid model may not be as relevant to Indonesia today, what’s being watched is how mobile is playing out in China with WeChat taking the lead. In Indonesia, of the 75 million Internet users, 38% are accessing via mobile, according to the top three telcos in the country – and it’s a number that’s moving fast.

WeChat recently added a flight booking service provided by LY.com – and Ctrip subsequently invested US$200 million in LY.com. With payments supported of course by WeChat Payment, this new eco-system enabling users to chat, plan and book could well be the next phase in online travel, and it could come to Indonesia and challenge the status quo.

And what does it take to be a status quo challenger? Turochas Fuad, who co-founded the peer-to-peer accommodation sharing site,Travelmob, which is seen as a contender to Airbnb in the Asian market, shared this list – question everything, embrace change, have passion, offer something meaningful, recruit and partner the right people and then, rock the boat.

Sharing a quote, “The most dangerous phrase in the language is ‘we’ve always done it this way’”, the Medan-born entrepreneur said that it takes courage to take a different path from the one most commonly travelled and to break out from the crowd. “It can get lonely but it can be extremely rewarding when it all comes together.”