New brand timed with beginnings of recovery in South-east Asia as Klook steps up focus in region
KLOOK’s new branding, unveiled in Singapore today, is meant to bring joy back into the world through travel and experiences and co-founder and COO, Eric Gnock Fah, was certainly looking joyful when I caught up with him in Singapore yesterday.
This was, after all, his first trip since the pandemic began and since his arrival in Singapore mid-January, he’s made a trip to Bangkok and Phuket, visiting partners. Gnock Fah said he had made the decision to base himself in Singapore for the next three months before the Omricon surge sent Hong Kong into a tailspin with rising daily infections and strict lockdown measures.
“It was good timing,” he said in our first face-to-face meeting since the pandemic began. “I need to visit partners face-t0-face and it’s easier to move around from Singapore, with the Vaccinated Travel Lanes.”
Eric Gnock Fah: Making Singapore his base for the next three months as the company moves to take advantage of the early recovery in South-east Asia.
Good timing is also behind the new brand relaunch, which is reflected in the UI and UX from today. It had actually been in the works since 2019 and timed for a launch at the Tokyo Olympics 2020, but was put on pause and evolved over the last two years into this new brand identity that tells travellers that Klook is “your world of joy”, a change from the previous “yours to explore”.
“Borders are reopening in South-east Asia,” said Gnock Fah. “This is a moment of joy for the industry and for travellers, after two years of restrictions. Travel stands for joy and happiness, experiences bring people together.
“We thought long and hard about what else we bring customers, beyond price and availability. Our customer surveys showed that when people visit our platform, it was always a joyful moment, planning their trips and going through the experiences we offer them unlike OTAs which are more functional, about which hotels or flights are cheaper. Experiences are not just about price.”
The distinct orange colour has been maintained. A new lighter font is in use, and the use of different “confetti” shapes represent happiness and diversity, said Gnock Fah. “The tone in which we interact with consumers will be more of a friend, a buddy.”
The anxieties of a first-time traveller; Singapore to play key role in expansion
Saying he was a good example of someone “who needed to get out to travel”, he said, “The few weeks before I left, I felt anxious. It was my first time travelling in two years, and when you have lived in an environment with zero Covid for so long, you feel the world has changed so much and you don’t know what awaits you.
“Secondly, I’ve never left a place for three months, I didn’t know what that would be like and that contributed to the anxiety.”
Having now been in Singapore, even with its social restrictions, for a month, he sees that life has moved on and indeed, he’s making arrangements to fly his dog into Singapore for this stint.
“Even in the last few months of 2021, we saw business growth in South-east Asia and the pick-up was fast. Travel is coming back and there’s no stronger message than to have senior management in person and in market to meet with merchants and partners than on Zoom calls, which are too functional. It’s good for our partners to see that founders and owners are making that first move.”
The co-founders of Klook, founded in 2005, have been based in Hong Kong since its establishment. This period has led to a re-evaluation of market priorities. Pre-Covid, Japan used to be its biggest market, followed by Hong Kong. About five to six years ago, South-east Asia started to grow and it expanded its team in Singapore.
Covid has deepened its roots in Singapore and Gnock Fah now sees the city state as playing an important role in its expansion in South-east Asia. In addition to its tech team in China, it is developing a tech team in Singapore to focus on data science, product development and engineering. Its senior vice president of technology sits in Singapore.
Asked if Klook would be moving its headquarters from Hong Kong to Singapore, he said, “What is the concept of HQ anyway in today’s world? Perhaps it’s where the owners and founders are? Hong Kong has become a difficult place to travel from and while I understand the government’s stance, we are not a China business, we are a global business.”
The Singapore Economic Development Board has also been making overtures to tech startups like Klook to base themselves in Singapore. “It’s been positive to see how open the Singapore government is, in adopting tech and developing partnerships. Look at the SRV (SingapoRediscover Vouchers). I am glad we managed to make an impact here,” he said.
The newly-branded UX and UI as of today
Bringing joy back to the workplace – how do you do it with remote work?
Gnock Fah sees himself as a good example of talent that can move and work from anywhere and he’s encouraging mobility of staff to different offices. To attract and retain staff in what is a tough market for talent, Klook has halved the time of employee vesting shares from four to two years.
“We want to make sure our staff are more incentivised, rather than have that long runway to think about,” he said. It has a total staff force of 1,200 with about 100 each in Singapore and Hong Kong and the bulk of it in the tech team in China.
He is also thinking about how to bring joy to the workplace and he said that is a struggle when people work remotely. “It is harder to build culture or belonging when you don’t have people working in an office. We are not robots – I am not a believer in full remote. Bringing joy to the workplace requires bringing staff back to the office. So I see a hybrid future.”
It’s also introduced a “joy allowance” for staff to spend on anything related to mental wellness.
Flickett to accelerate digitisation; Klook to co-invest with DMCs to co-design experiences
In terms of experiencing the joy again of travel, he said Bangkok and Phuket were certainly quieter than before. “The good news in Phuket is, shows are coming back and tourism is coming back in a sustainable way. It was good to see that Maya Bay (Phi Phi Island) has a more structured approach now to entry and exit – it gave governments the time they needed to build sustainability.”
For now though, bookings into South-east Asia are still coming from Europe, US and Australia, with minimal intra-regional travel taking place at the moment.
“The most popular category has been car rental and we were lucky in 2020 to acquire the car rental company. Asians have never used car rental in a big way before but now we see Thai people renting cars. Car rental is proving more popular than trains.”
During the pandemic, Klook has also developed partnerships with DMOs such as Singapore Tourism Board, Saudi Arabian Tourism Authority and lately, Da Nang Tourism Promotion Centre in Vietnam. These partnerships, he said, “are not a business line or a profit model. They are our commitment to digitise the industry faster to support the customer.”
To this end, it also formalised the launch of its SaaS brand, Flickket, which he said is seeing strong demand from attractions to mom-and-pop merchants, and governments. It addresses two pain points – operations (content, booking, payments) and distribution (giving merchants access to customers with channel management solutions).
It includes Express Go!, an offline one-touch QR code ticketing solution. “This was always the hardest to solve when people had to enter credit card details, etc, and it was easier to go through the ticketing booth. Now that wallets are ubiquitous, the payment problem has been solved.”
It is now in beta launch with 20 attractions in the main markets of the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand and Japan , and it covers more than 20 local wallets and payments.
One future area of growth is co-investing and co-designing of experiences with DMCs (destination management companies) which Gnock Fah acknowledges are the true experts in delivering experiences on the ground and have often been forgotten in the Great Online Rush.
“We will increase co-investments with DMCs to co-design original experiences. We used to have Klook Editions. This will help us better address sustainability issues.”
One big change coming out of Covid in terms of distribution, he said, has been the disappearance of major DMCs in markets such as China, Japan and South Korea. “Those DMCs use to be a major distribution partner for overseas merchants who wanted to address certain markets. Take China, as an example – DMCs used to do this and now they are gone.
“And we have brands like Meituan and Fliggy whom we are working with to help them with distribution through our channel management system. The whole game of distribution has changed.”
As for what he’s most excited about in 2022, he said, “Travel is coming back and I am experiencing it firsthand. I wish more people will rediscover the joy of travel, and rediscover it in a new way.”
