During WiT Europe, a panel on “Consumers, They Are A-Changing” gathered three different businesses from three different regions, South-east Asia, North Asia and Latin America – but they have one thing in common – they are all linked to the superapp ecosystem.
LINE Travel.jp is linked to the messaging app, LINE, that is huge in Japan and parts of South-east Asia, Rappi Travel is the travel vertical of the Latin American superapp and Klook is now linked to the superapp ecosystem in South-east Asia, by virtue of its recent partnership with Grab, which started with ride hailing but has grown to encompass food delivery, logistics, e-commerce and payments.
These superapps ecosystems got supersized during Covid, as consumers around the world were forced online to buy groceries, order food, communicate and entertain themselves.
In South-east Asia, a Facebook and Bain & Company report noted that there would be 310m digital consumers in South-east Asia by the end of 2020 and online spend is projected to grow 320% between 2018 and 2025.
Bain also reported the acceleration of the discovery of new apps – the survey found that 28% tried a new e-commerce app and 27% tried a new digital payments app. And 77% tried a new app that they plan to continue using post-Covid-19. And with more using social media apps, social commerce is flourishing.
Livestreaming here to say in South-east Asia and Latin America
One key trend that Sarah Wan, SEA Marketing Director, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore for Klook, has seen is that “live streaming is no longer a North Asian (or Chinese) phenomenon, and it is here to stay”.
“It’s a race for brands to capture eyeballs on this new platform, and we will see more investing in improving production value and interactivity of live streams – with some even going to the extent of building their own in-App capabilities for more direct traffic instead of relying on third-party platforms like Facebook.”
Certainly, Trip.com has been most active in live streaming outside China and has been hosting almost weekly sessions in South-east Asia and OTAs such as Traveloka, Ivuvu and Ixigo have tried live streaming in their respective markets with varying degrees of success. With limited budgets to spend on marketing, travel brands are trying to build alternative channels to acquire customers.
While the jury’s still out on conversions on this channel, it can only get better as brands themselves get better at producing live streaming content and figure out ways to entice consumers to buy instantly,
Rappi, with 25 million users across nine Latin American markets, launched a live stream channel for artistes in lieu of live concerts. It launched on June 16 with Colombian singer/songwriter Manuel Medrano. It has since added a new feature – Rappi Live Events offering customers videogames, concerts, live shopping, and music.
“Millions of our users connected – not only Colombian artists, but football players, other influencers, YouTubers. It went very well. It actually was maybe the beginning of live and interactive commerce and social commerce. It was a good test to see users trying the technology, the UX, getting into this new trend of live streaming and commerce. I believe the trend is here,” said Guido Becher, head of travel, Rappi.
Local travel, local marketing, alternatives to Google being explored
In Japan, Kei Shibata, CEO of LINE Travel.jp said, “Location-based marketing leveraging SuperApps/messaging apps is becoming a vital tool for travel distribution. Destinations want to optimize the number of visitors by avoiding over-tourism. Travel companies want to maximize the results from marketing with limited budgets. Consumers look for deals in their neighborhood.”
Certainly, with domestic tourism the only source of business for now, the industry is seeing more localised marketing and niching of communities. Facebook Groups for example exploded during Covid – people wanting to find comfort online – and some publishers are niching down into these groups.
Becher was curious about how Google would position itself in the post-Covid online marketing situation. “During these months, there has been a void/vacuum with much fewer players and activity happening, so I see a big challenge there. I want to see how the new Ad Words game starts again.
“Travel companies are competing more than ever with Instagram and social networks for travellers’ attention span, so travel companies will need to regain the relationship with travellers that have been looking for nice pictures and videos more than ever, not being able to visit their desired destination. And superapps have been grabbing the e-commerce focus, so they are for sure becoming (how can I say otherwise), the obligatory destination for many of the travel brands.”
Added Shibata, “I think the pandemic has really given us the opportunity to re-evaluate our strategy, and the fundamentals of our businesses. It is a perfect time to actually to diversify marketing channels. That’s the reason why the likes of Booking.com and Expedia are heavily investing in our platform; they are seeing it as an alternative channel to Google. Superapps are definitely well positioned to take some market share from Google down the road.”
Wan felt that during a crisis, it is better to over-communicate than under-communicate. “With COVID changing the way we work, play and travel, safety will be the top priority from research down to purchase. Versus short and sweet content snippets, we see people more readily consuming longer-form articles and even videos. The brand that addresses concerns will ultimately get the conversion.”
“Workations” set to transform tourism in Japan
Shibata also cited another trend he’s excited about – private accommodation within the context of “workation”.
“At our Trip101 and LINE TRAVEL jp, we’ve had a tremendous growth of distribution in the private accommodation space globally. While the US is leading with 2.47x YoY growth (based on the numbers between July 16 and August 15), we’ve also started seeing some impressive growth numbers in Asia as Japan grew at 53% YoY and Malaysia grew at 79% YoY. What makes me excited is the trend behind this growth, which is “workation”. “Workation” could fundamentally transform the travel industry as well as the entire ecosystem of our society.”
He referred to this article which explains how Japan is trying to revive its tourist economy with “workations”.
Becher meanwhile says one major shift is a lot of direct to consumer behaviours. “In Latam, people are buying groceries from the butcher, farms, gluten-free stores, though WhatsApp and QR codes and direct payment links. People want to be closer to the real stuff, the organic and local provider, even more than before. I’m seeing a trend there too and it would be interesting to see how it evolves with travel intermediaries getting back to marketing investments.”
So in this accelerated trend brought on by the pandemic, what must intermediaries do immediately to remain relevant, and even increase their value to customers?
“We cannot deny that more are going direct to brands but what we’re trying to do is really become a platform for inspiration and discovery – helping users discover new brands to connect to. I would also say we must look into our loyal programmes to make sure that we can keep customers coming back,” said Wan.
Shibata said intermediaries should see themselves in a better position to keep that customer coming back, but he stressed the importance of keeping engaged with the customer.
“We have to keep on increasing touchpoints with the users at the right time, right location with the right channel with the right content. I think intermediaries actually have more and better opportunities to do so compared to the suppliers.”
