Traveloka is an Indonesian unicorn company that provides airline ticketing and hotel booking services online expanding rapidly into Southeast Asia and Australia. It recently expanded to provide lifestyle products and services, such as attraction tickets, activities, car rental, and restaurant vouchers.
History
Traveloka was established in 2012 by information technology practitioners who returned from the United States to Indonesia, Derianto Kusuma, Ferry Unardi and Albert. They were joined in 2013 by the initiator of KawalPemilu.org, Ainun Najib. In 2014, hotel reservations instead of just flight reservations were added. In 2017, train tickets and food features were added. At that time, it said it had raised funds to develop machine learning and AI. Expedia became a minority investor in 2017, when Traveloka was operating in six countries and advertising heavily in Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam. In 2018, the company acquired three online travel agencies: Pepipegi from Indonesia, Mytour from Vietnam, and Travelbook from the Philippines. In 2019, it launched a home protection insurance plan in Indonesia, taking advantage of widespread travel durking the mudik tradition. Movie-booking was also added that year through Major Cineplex. It then introduced visa insurance for Indonesian travelers, to cover accidents, sickness, flight delays, and baggage loss. Later that year, it also began listing villas and apartments to book. In January 2019, Traveloka opened a Research & Development center in Bangalore.. Also it began releasing kiosks to buy tourist trips in Singapore. In the beginning, Traveloka served as a search engine to compare the price of airline tickets from various other sites. In mid-2013, Traveloka then turned into a ticket reservation website, where users could place an order on its official website. By 2019, it had also moved into financial services as well as ticketing and hotel booking, and it had launched a credit card with Bank Rakyat Indonesia. Traveloka launched the "Xperience" brand in July 2019, initially in Thailand. It was active in Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and Australia. Within the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, in April 2020, the company laid off a significant portion of its staff as the demand for travel dropped significantly. The cuts affected 100 people in Indonesia. There had also been a "massive amount" of requests for refunds for travel plans. There was also in increase in trip cancelations.
Investment
In November 2012, the company Traveloka announced its initial investment by East Ventures. In September 2013, the company announced a series investment by Global Founders Capital. Funds from investments are used to build new services such as hotel bookings and travel packages. In July 2017, Traveloka again get an injection of funds of Rp. 4.6 Trillion from companies such as Expedia Inc., East Ventures, Hillhouse Capital Group, JD.com and Sequoia Capital. By 2018, it was often referred as a unicorn company. In April 2019, Traveloka announced it had raised $420 million dollars in a round led by Singapore's sovereign wealth fund, GIC. At the time, it was the largest online travel startup in Southeast Asia. While aiming to establish profit before going public, the company then was considering a dual listing in Indonesia and the United States, if it went through with an IPO. Henry Hendrawan was Traveloka Group's president. Apparently, the IPO had been delayed due to a slowing economy, as well as difficult IPOs by Uber and WeWork. Among backers at that time were GIC Pte Ltd, JD.com, and Expedia, and it had raised a total of $900. Talks put the company's valuation at around $4.5 billion.
Acquisitions
In December 2018, Traveloka announced it had acquired three online travel agencies – Indonesia’s Pegipegi, Vietnam’s Mytour, and the Philippines’ Travelbook – for US$66.8 million.
Controversy
Traveloka was boycotted by netizens because founder, Derianto Kusuma, allegedly participated in the walk-out action, like Ananda Sukarlan, when Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan gave a speech during the 90th anniversary celebrating Kolese Kanisius on 14 November 2017, although Traveloka denied that the founder attended the event.
