This union between the modern and traditional symbolizes the metamorphosis this leading Singapore outbound tour operator(www.ctc.com.sg) has been undergoing the past few years, and continues to undergo as it tries to keep pace with developments in the online world and changing customer behaviour in Singapore.

After all, there is probably no tougher market than Singapore to be a brick-and-mortar travel agent. It’s one of the most wired cities in the world with close to 80% Internet penetration. Mobile phone penetration is more than 100% and more than half of S50% of its population are users of Facebook.

Recognising the need to diversify and find new revenue streams away from retail ticketing, Wee Hee Ling, CEO of CTC Tourism Holdings, has been slowly but steadily changing the business model over the last six years since she took over the reins.

Two years ago, she started CTC Tourism Holdings to broaden its business beyond being an outbound tour operator under the Commonwealth Travel brand. The company is now into hotel management, production and entertainment and events. It owns a hotel, @gallerysuites, and a theatre in Shanghai, and is working on expanding its hotel division.

“We needed to diversify. We had grown to a size where we weren’t seeing that much growth anymore unless we merged with someone,” she said.

While retail travel continues to be its core business, she sees the mix changing in three years time.

To rise above the competition in Singapore’s outbound tour market – which is highly price-driven – it identified tour niches it could specialize in and it built up a reputation for educational tourism and launched a brand called Golden Age Vacation.

“The competition is very tough. People are driving prices down, profits are getting lower, and they’re spending so much on advertising. I don’t think it’s necessary to spend so much on advertising.

“Customers are quite discerning now and these customers are not just looking for price but value – so we try and offer them something unique such as exclusive stays in certain properties. People are then willing to pay more.” 

She said that customers were also getting younger. “In the old days, the people who went on China tours were quite old, now there’s a mix of young and old.”

Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China continue to be hot sellers.

She knows that she needs to get the agency deeper into the online environment. “That is the future but it takes a lot of money,” she said. The company’s started a couple of websites such as findmerooms.com and myjapanvacation.com. It wants to start an online Private Collection to try and get itself out of the middle market squeeze.

“But finding the right people and solutions to execute it is hard. Getting staff generally is difficult.” 

Excluding ticketing, Commonwealth Travel handles about 80,000 clients a year. The agency recently became the first Singapore retail travel agent to get an ISO rating for service quality.

• Wee Hee Ling will be joining the search panel at WIT as well as speaking about specialization at the WIT Ideas Lab at ITB Asia.

 Featured image credit (The way forward railway): Ockra/iStock