From finding the right skills in revenue management to social and mobile moves in a multichannel world, the rising threat of low-cost carriers and a rapidly changing China, the Asian Pacific market travel market throws up its own particular challenges and opportunities. Are you ready to grasp them?

This year Asia-Pacific will be the fastest growing travel market, expected to reach $357 billion this year, according the ITB World Travel Trends Report 2012/13. Only yesterday, members of the UK government and private sector were discussing why they should relax visa restrictions to attract more visitors from mainland China.  But China’s growth in outbound travel is only one part of Asia-Pacific travel story.

Over the past few months EyeforTravel.com has been talking to some of the movers and shakers, who will be speaking at Travel Distribution Summit in Singapore later this month. Here we identify explore some of the questions likely to arise on May 28-29.

1. Skilling up: revenue management skills are not what they used to be so what should you be looking for?

Like elsewhere in the world, Asian revenue managers seem to agree that it is critical for the revenue management function to work across all revenue generating departments. Because of this revenue managers today must not only be able to forecast accurately and effectively use data (still the most important function), they must be excellent communicators, have good business acumen and an understanding the customer’s needs, says Puri Saurav Puri, director of revenue management at The Ritz-Carlton in Bangalore. For Shihaj Abdullakutty Senior Vice President Network and Revenue Management at Malaysia Airlines RM teams need to get out in to the markets to familiarise themselves with the latest sales techniques, competitor strategies at the floor level and the challenges facing traditional distribution channels.

2. It’s a multichannel world: are you ready to optimise and how?  

In India where there has been a major increase in supply not matched by demand, there are some very specific challenges. Rates have come down as hotels have tried to maintain occupancy levels and new hotels are springing up all the time. So here a primary focus right now for hotels is to optimise all channels and look for emerging sources or alternative channels to sustain and grow the business. Revenue managers, marketing and e-commerce teams must adapt to advances in social media and online marketing, which has evolved to be a key channel and influencer.

Unsurprisingly, in this environment some hotels are looking to deals. According Andy Khen, corporate director of e-commerce, Santika Indonesia Hotels & Resorts, the likes of Groupon and LivingSocial have proved to be “powerful marketing vehicles” to gain exposure. According to Khen deal specialists differ from the OTA’s because they create demand by inspiring travellers to book a hotel.

When it comes to deals in the airline space, the influx of low cost carriers is huge challenge and seriously dents the confidence of traditional players, says Abdullakutty. “This is a segment that cannot be ignored because of the sizeable catchment volumes but the business needs to know the risk of competing,” he says.

3.  OTAs vs Direct: how can you monetise online traffic in one of the world’s fastest growing markets?

Let’s just say that earlier this week Priceline’s, Jeffrey Boyd, told analysts that that Asia Pacific is a "very, very competitive market" for online travel agents.  The absolute economics in terms of the pricing of hotels and the competition makes it potentially more expensive than other key global markets, he said. But the good news is that Asia Pacific markets are growing fast, which is enough compensation, if you understand the market.  Across the globe, the growth in travel search queries, app downloads and revenue-per-thousand queries is growing. To meet this challenge meta-search engines and OTAs are tweaking their respective business models.  Ewan Gray, director – Asia Pacific, SkyScanner, who will be speaking at the Travel Distribution Summit, Asia, says going forward, a lot will depend on how suppliers and OTAs ‘play the meta game’. With Google’s entry in meta-search, a lot of OTAs and suppliers in Asia will be intensifying their existing relationships with the larger meta-search players in their markets. Which brings us to our next question….

4. Do you really know your customer? Does your customer even know you?

International brands that don’t adapt their business models for the Asian market are, it seems, on a high road to nothing. Worryingly, many Chinese customers still don’t know the difference between a Hilton and a Sheraton hotel because not enough time and effort has gone into their online platforms and strategy, says Joseph Wang senior director, hotel business at Qunar. That is a big mistake considering that today most new Chinese customers will turn to the likes of Ctrip, eLong or Qunar first, rather than going direct to a hotel’s website. International brands don’t seem to have grasped that while in other markets 50% of bookings may come from their call centre or brand website, the same is not true of China. So is it time for these big brand hotels to rethink these partnerships with Chinese OTAs and meta-search players if they are going to survive? And for OTAs what are the opportunities right across Asia to get more travel brands online?

5. Semantic search: is this becoming a reality?

Facebook’s launch Graph Search suggests this could be the case. Bearing in mind that Facebook now has over a billion active users (that is more than the population of Africa) then if there is mass take up and people making queries like ‘Places my friends have stayed in Singapore,’ or ‘coffee shops my friends have been to in Seoul’ the implications for the travel industry are obvious.  

Aloke Bajpai, founder and chief executive of iXiGO.com, says the ability to ask ‘How do I go from Bangalore to Shimla?’ or ‘Delhi to London flights next week’ and getting a useful answer for them is becoming really important.  iXiGO has launched a natural language search engine that understands travel queries on the site and on Facebook/ Twitter and responds automatically to them with a relevant answer. Watch this space.

6. Mobile may be old hat but can a tablet strategy really be tackled in the same way as a smartphone?

In Asia, mobile is big news and like elsewhere will continue to remain an important focus area for brands; this subject that is bound to dominate many discussions in Singapore. We expect to hear lot more about innovation around specific use-cases for finding travel information, deals and search that involve building customer confidence, exploring the boundaries between social and travel, and perhaps the arrival of more travel planning startups.  Some like Bajpaj believe that with the boundary lines of mobile and tablet blurring, the need for adaptive mobile apps [that work seamlessly across form factors / screen sizes and adapt functionality and design accordingly] will be more strongly felt,” says Bajpaj. Others, however, may well argue that at a tablet strategy should look and feel quite different to that of a smartphone.

7. A professional approach: should your brand be on LinkedIn?

Did you know, for example, that Chinese business travellers book in three major ways? First they call a friend or colleagues in another city to ask them where to stay, secondly they turn to Ctrip or elong. Finally they will use a mobile phone to find and purchase the best last-minute deal. And did you know that Asia is home to the 40% of the world’s professional audience? For this reason LinkedIn Hari Krishnan, LinkedIn’s managing director for Asia Pacific & Japan, believes the possibilities for the Asia-Pacific region are huge and growing – particularly on the mobile front. LinkedIn has helped a number of Asian brands cut through noise in this competitive space. Cathay Pacific, for example, is one such client which wanted to target people flying business class between the US and Asia. A targeted strategy using targeted ads and sponsored polls to a select group achieved measurable results:three sponsored polls generated more than 1,300 responses from business travellers, while the ads generated 97 recommendations on the company’s product page. Read more on EyeforTravel.com

10.  Is your content highly shareable? If not you need to rethink your strategy fast!

Everybody is talking personalisation, everybody is talking relevance and some are even saying the next wave in Internet marketing will making the web more beautiful. One thing is certain: holding your customer’s attention in a crowded space will be essential, and getting them to share your content even more so.  In marketing speak friends telling friends about a trip, meal or experience is called word-of-mouth marketing. This used to happen in the real world but now we have Facebook, says Myungjo Choi, Facebook’s Head of APAC eCommerce. If people are willing to share your content, it is the ultimate word-of-mouth and it means that your content is reaching a much wider audience. In fact, Facebook's internal algorithms, which prioritise what users see on their news feeds, give shares more than 1,000% more importance than ‘likes’. How brands can create meaningful, shareable content will be another key theme at TDS Asia.

Don’t delay time is running out. Sign up today for the Travel Distribution Summit, Asia in Singapore 28-29 May to hear more insights from some of the top travel executives featured in this article