Two years after its acquisition by TripAdvisor in 2014, Viator is now ready to put more resources into Asia and build a name for itself in the tours and activities space in the region.
And that job falls to Anita Ngai, general manager of Viator APAC, and she certainly has a strong base from which to work.
Founded in 1995, Viator today runs 10 local-language sites, five fully optimised mobile sites and over 3,000 affiliate sites, serving North and South America, Europe and Japan.
Ngai observes that tours and activities is the next playing field “now that the flight space has been fought over and the hotel space is pretty much settled by a couple OTAs… That’s why we’re pooling our resources in the Asia market.”
The challenges and opportunities for growth in Asia
Anita Ngai has the large task of building Viator’s presence in Asia
Is Ngai concerned that currently Viator’s main influence rests in the USA and that might make their transition to Asia now more difficult? “We’re in travel. We’d never want to limit ourselves to a particular geography. We started the company in Australia so we’ve always technically been in APAC… [but] how we move in each market will be based on different factors.”
So how exactly does Viator plan to differentiate its strategies between so many different travel markets not just in the world generally but in APAC alone, which arguably boasts one of the most diverse traveller demographics?
“Actually, that’s my job!” she laughed, “how do you take what you’ve built as the base (your website and backend system) and then adapt it enough so that local travellers don’t feel like you’re a foreign website? At the same time, not adapting it so much that we lose our advantage of scale… finding that balance is the billion or even trillion-dollar question!”
Ngai outlines Viator’s current strategy of easing into markets with the biggest potential. “I’m starting to build a team here in Singapore. Another market we have a big focus on is Japan, both inbound and outbound.”
Why not China or Indonesia – each boasting incredible potential? For China, she argues that while there is massive opportunity, “no one really reaps the benefits unless you’re starting from the inside.” Ngai points out Ctrip’s incredible success and how the majority of successful travel businesses in China are ultimately Chinese.
For Indonesia, “our 2017 strategy is looking at it more as an inbound market than as an outbound, we don’t want to be outside of it but we want to have a more ‘wait and see’ attitude for when we should start pouring resources into it.”
Another main challenge Ngai foresees in enforcing its presence in Asia is in the very product that Viator sells.
“In the past, we’ve gotten more tours and activities that would probably be more suitable for an American or a Westerner… but take Paris for example, no matter what country you come from, number one attraction is still the Eiffel Tower… but then when you look at the second and third most viewed, that’s when you see divergence.”
At the moment, the percentage split between Western and Asian travellers stands at around 70% to 30%, Ngai estimates. Of course, given the market, Viator is making quick moves to shift that distribution dramatically. “We just haven’t had the resources and the capacity to focus on expanding in this region yet.”
The strife of tours and activities startups
On the number of start-ups attempting to operate in the same field, Ngai sighs and says that the challenge is far greater than people anticipate.
“To launch a tours and activities business isn’t too difficult, but to scale it is. In 2016, we’ve seen a number of the smaller startups having to pivot, and not really overcome that scale hurdle… and it matters a lot.
“The reason we have so much history and that scale behind us is because the more business we get, the more resources we can put on our supply team to go and contact these smaller operators to sell their product on our platform. But if you don’t have that business size yet, you naturally won’t have resources or team members to [achieve that].”
Ngai argues that another challenge that many may not anticipate is the change in investor sentiment about the tours and activities space.
“From the investor side, a lot of the VC funds demand profitability quickly… and the appetite of those investors this year has decreased sharply. Many of the smaller players have just dropped off the radar.”
