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A year after they won the WIT Indonesia Start-Up Pitch, the co-founders of Lagisatu have been hard at work building up their halal-filtered hotel meta-search business and this week, launched an Arabic version for Middle East travellers.
LagiSatu.com, a Malaysian-Austrian collaboration between Faeez Fadhlillah and Juergen Gallistl, won the prize in Jakarta based on their halal search differentiation and in the last 12 months, the duo have worked at expanding and deepening its Halal-stars rated content as well as improving the user interface.
“It’s been a steep learning curve. When we started, we had no idea whatsoever. We had to change the design several times and we worked a lot at enhancing the user experience and SEO. We also grew our partnerships with OTAs such as LateRooms.com, Agoda, eBookers, Expedia and Hotelclub.”
The co-founders were also persuaded by advisors to focus on halal search but they stuck to their guns and stayed true to their original idea of having a hotel meta model with a halal filter. “We introduced the halal filter as a great way to attract another segment. It’s still an option for the future. Until you have the whole word rated, there are too few hotels, so this is a good way to start.
“It depends on the customers’ degree of piousness. One new feature we introduced a week ago is a second level of halal certification, after our own, by working with local authorities – so we are working with authorities in Malaysia, Singapore and other countries to get a second level of certification.”
Currently, Lagisatu features 600,000 hotels, of which 10,000 are halal-rated and cover countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, China, Britain, Australia and Hong Kong. The site is available in five languages with the latest being Arabic. By the end of next week, a Chinese version will be launched. It is also working on a mobile site which it expects to complete shortly. The majority of visits to the site – at 100,000 uniques a month – come from Malaysia.
Based on data provided by Google, nine out of 10 Malaysian travelers use the web to research on hotel and five out of 10 will book their hotel online. “Currently our majority source of traffic is from Malaysia itself, but we are seeing a significant increase in Middle East searches and booking. The interesting aspect of this is that, based on searches and booking through Lagisatu.com, the Middle East travelers tend to book for a longer period when compared to Malaysian tourists and spend 3-5 times more on hotels when compared to Malaysian travelers. 
“It’s also very interesting to see the different behavior in terms of destination of choice differs from one country to another, ie, Saudi Arabian and UAE have different favourite destinations based on the searches made on Lagisatu.com, which I find very fascinating considering that they share the same culture and language.
“The significant increase in searches and booking from the Middle East region, primarily Saudi Arabia, UAE and Oman prompted us to develop the Arabic version which we hope will increase their user experience and ultimately increase their conversion rate.”
Faeez is excited by the potential of the Middle East market with its population of more than 400 million. “According to statistics by the Indonesian Travel and Tours Association, Middle Eastern tourist tend to spend more than triple that of other nationalities which suggests there is a huge potential for these travellers to save money on their hotel costs. We hope to provide one click access to thousands of accommodation providers so Middle Eastern travellers can take charge of their travel budgets in just a click.”
Lagisatu’s Halal Stars rating system means services and and facilities are rated and listed by religious amenities. Room considerations include the presence of a prayer mat, Quran and Qiblah direction while food is rated according to facilities such as the availability of Halal room service and Halal restaurant and whether or not Iftar and Sahoor can be arranged.
The halal market, said to be worth US$130 billion in 2012, is hotting up with players such as Crescentating acquiring Halaltrip.comand re-launching it with the aim of becoming the world’s first full-fledged travel booking site specialising in the needs of the Muslim traveler.
“Although we are approaching it from a different angle, we always see them as a brother in cause growing the market together with us,” said Faeez.
The start-up continues to be bootstrapped and the duo are in talks with investors to raise funding. “The funding is to help us expand. Sustaining it is not a problem,” said Faeez.
Asked if he was worried that major players like Trivago or TripAdvisor or even OTAs like Agoda could just introduce a halal filter, he said, “The feature is easy to replicate but it’s not easy to execute – the level of work needed to ensure services and facilities are Halal-rated is complex.
“We feel the Malaysian market right now has no clear leader in the online travel space and consumers are clearly moving online compared to last year. Our conversion rates are rising and we believe the market can only move forward.”
Note: The halal market opportunity will be discussed at WIT Middle East, March 26-27, in Dubai with Lagisatu and halaltrip as featured speakers.
