RISE Conference is back in Hong Kong and just like the previous year, this year’s event will play host to some of the biggest names in tech industry. From huge corporations to young startups, everyone will gather to share their stories and learn from what others have been through to build their brand. The event offers great opportunity for young startups to explore new avenues and just like last year, there are some really interesting travel startups that will be attending the event.

Here are the ones you shouldn’t miss if you are attending:

Palapal

Nothing is more frustrating than not having the right companions while travelling. Travelling with the right people can be the difference between a tiring journey and an amazing experience. There are even times when you just don’t have anyone to travel with as all your friends are busy with work when you are available. For times like these, Palapal allows you to connect with like-minded individuals to travel with you. You can simply list your trip or hop on to a trip created by someone else if the plan suits you well.

Location: Hong Kong

Website: www.palapal.co

JET

Ride-sharing isn’t really a fresh concept anymore but JET goes a step further and offers ride sharing as well as logistics solutions through a single app. Indonesia has a high demand for alternate transport options and JET is trying to make the utilisation of available resources more efficient. The option of availing logistics services on demand speeds up the process as compared to the standard process followed by other delivery services and as there are multiple options offered, the users get flexibility depending on the requirements.

Location: Indonesia

Website: www.jointexpresstransport.com

Nowboat

While ground transportation has changed significantly by the technological advancements and the entry of many players in the segment, boat charters still continue to run on the age old processes. Nowboat aims to change that by putting together the quality providers and offering travellers the ability to book with professional tour operators and charter companies. The listings include various experiences that travellers can avail on their trips and it is easy to search on the basis of location or type of activity. The business model is quite simple as they operate on small commissions to generate their operating costs and margins.

Location: Hong Kong

Website: www.nowboat.com

My Taxi India

Uber and Ola are tackling the problems of urban transportation in India very well but outstation cabs still continue to be a less explored area. There are various local operators and then there are some aggregators who are limited in terms of geographies covered. My Taxi India tries to address that by covering wide geographies for outstation travel with the help of a large number of affiliate partners and having a large network enables them to offer one way rides at lower fares. The company also offers packages for travellers looking to travel to popular tourist destinations.

Location: India

Website: www.mytaxiindia.com

Odigo

Launched near the beginning of last year, Odigo is a trip planning startup headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. For anyone looking to explore Japan, Odigo offers tips, trips and recommendations from the locals who know the place inside out. Travellers can use the details to put together their itinerary or use one created by someone else. The created itineraries can be saved offline or printed depending on how you want to use them.

Location: Japan

Website: www.odigo.travel

TravelerFirst

Flights are often delayed and at times even cancelled causing huge inconvenience to the travellers. The degree could vary widely but there is no denying the fact that everyone suffers from these delays. Passengers have the right to be compensated for this but only a small fraction of them know about this and even smaller fraction of passengers actually claim their rights. TravelerFirst advocates for the passengers to get them the compensation they deserve and accelerate the process.

Location: Switzerland

Website: www.travelerfirst.eu

Zula Afrika

Congestion isn’t a challenge limited to one geography. It is a problem faced by people all over and startups are different brands are exploring ways to tackle the problem in different ways. Zula Afrika is a shuttle service accessible via mobile app and provides shared transportation to commuters travelling in the same direction for work. One of the many reasons people prefer personal vehicles over public transportation is because of the flexibility. Zula Afrika gives the commuters more flexibility while reducing the number of cars on the road.

Location: South Africa

Website: www.zulaafrika.com

The RISE Conference is scheduled for May 31 to June 2, 2016. There are lot more exciting things lined up for the three days and you can find the full schedule here.

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Earlier this year, it was announced by Archaeological Survey of India that the heritage sites in Delhi will get free wifi for tourists. With a large number of people present on social media platforms, the idea behind this move is to motivate them to share over social media. More people talking about the tourist attractions will help in spreading the word and thus lure more tourists, both domestic and international. Sites like Qutub Minar, Red Fort and Humayun’s tomb are on top of the list of places to get the free Wi-Fi.

Few months prior to this announcement, we saw free Wi-Fi service being started in the Connaught Place and Khan Market regions of New Delhi. Long before that, Indian Railway started Wi-FI service in few Rajdhani trains and on New Delhi railway station.

The progress so far

While the move was widely appreciated, the real picture isn’t as pretty as it appeared to be in the news headlines and government announcements. Sure it was launched with BJP MP streaming Pharell William’s Happy on YouTube, it has been losing popularity among visitors because of numerous issues. According to multiple users, the service used to work fine in the initial days but coverage was very limited. Now things have worsened and users are unable to use the services at all. There is hardly any network coverage and they have to login multiple times which makes it more of an inconvenience than a facility. There were proposed plans to replace the light poles with ‘NextGen digital poles’ fitted with Wi-Fi routers, LED lamps and CCTV cameras but they have taken a back seat now.

Domestic travellers have the option of switching to their data networks if they need connectivity but international travellers are left helpless unless they have a local SIM card. The mobile networks aren’t any good, even in the metro cities. TRAI has been working with mobile operators to improve the quality of service but good 3G and 4G connectivity is still a distant dream for us.

The Indian Government is working to make India a connected destination and has initiated campaigns like Digital India but these issues are a roadblock in the way ahead. At this point, the infrastructure of our country isn’t supportive enough for an international traveller. We can take a page out of the book of some international destinations to improve the travellers’ experience here.

What others are doing

During our recent visit to Hong Kong for the RISE conference, we observed that they offer excellent support for international travellers. Throughout Hong Kong, you can find free Wi-Fi hotspots operated by CSL, Hong Kong’s first mobile communications operator. There are more than 15,000 hotspots strategically placed all over. The service works very well and offers seamless connectivity for the travellers.

Discover Hong Kong Tourist SIM Card available at the airport

Apart from that, Hong Kong tourism board provides international travellers with Discover Hong Kong Tourism SIM cards in association with CSL. It is available in two packages with the HK$ 118 package offering 5 GB of 4G data for 8 days. That is more than enough data for all your photo uploads and Skype calls for the duration of your stay. If you are planning to visit the neighbouring countries then you have the option to choose extended data coverage to Mainland China, Macau and Taiwan. It also includes unlimited local voice calls and preloaded credit for international calls. These SIM cards are easily available through multiple outlets including the International Airport Arrival Hall.

Apart from improving the quality of Wi-Fi networks that are already in place, Indian government can work with the major telecom operators here to offer similar options like Tourist SIM cards. This will not only help travellers stay connected but also promote India as a tourist destination by motivating them to share their experiences. What else do you think can be done to improve the experience of travellers coming to India and make it a truly connected destination?

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Hong Kong based travel activities startup Klook.com had recently secured $1.5 million seed round from new investors Shuren Hu and Tencent’s senior vice president Wu Xiaoguang. To in-bound & out-bound travellers visit most countries in APAC, Klook presents diverse travel experiences at discounted rates. So you could get anything from an exclusively priced ticket to Disneyland or a discounted ticket to Singapore flyer.

While Klook has been primarily focussing on inbound travellers, we believe that it also presents a wide range of options to outbound travellers visiting the countries covered by Klook. Our founding partner, Daksh Sharma caught-up with Klook’s co-founder at the RISE Conference for a quick chat on the startup’s journey and the road ahead.

Excerpts from our conversation with Eric.

What inspired you guys to start Klook?

The founding team are avid travelers, despite we were in busy in banking jobs.  We would spontaneously plan getaways once we have a chance by booking flights and hotels easily online…but we soon realized that the most time consuming is actually looking for things-to-do at the best value.  If we planned ahead to research – it takes a lot of time.  If we are spontaneous in booking when we are at the destination, we often felt getting overcharged by local travel agents.  The idea came to start a venture that will facilitate discovery + booking of things-to-do whether you’re planning before departure or when you’re at the destination with mobile app along with instant confirmation and exclusive deals.

For a startup that’s just about a year old and operates from Hong Kong how challenging is it to manage expectations of travellers across South East Asia?

All of the operators we work with are the best ones carefully sourced by our team of travel curators – making sure they deliver high quality services.  At the same time, we have a full fledged customer service team to support.

That’s the entire Klook team posing on their recent team holiday

You had secured $1.5 million investment some months back. How are the funds being utilized as of now.

We are really just starting to use the funds as Klook has been growing organically without much marketing spend.  Going forward, we would invest more in technology as well as marketing campaigns.  Many travel brands and local attractions are eager to collaborate with Klook in co-marketing as we bring them “social capital” with our excellent original content creation.

Who are your active competitors?

Certainly Tripadvisor is one of the major competitor after their acquisition of Viator.  But given online / mobile booking penetration rate is still so low (at less than 8%), we find that more players in the industry actually help educate the market that activities CAN be booked online / mobile.

Which are the most popular cities/activities on Klook?

As Klook launched Hong Kong, Singapore and Macau as the first 3 cities back in Sep-2014 – these are the most popular right now.  But we are also seeing fast ramp up of Japan, Thailand and Taiwan.

Generally what’s the trend you see – Is it more inbound traffic or outbound international traveller traffic that you see on Klook?

We focus more on inbound traffic and we see that as our unique positioning given the fact that Klook platform is designed and catered for both native English and Chinese-speaking travelers, which we believe capture 80% of the travel market.

Tell us some of the growth challenges that you foresee at Klook.

Similar to many travel companies, maintaining reasonable user acquisition cost is tricky.  However, we are glad to have cracked it.  Having quickly established as a leading voice in travel, Klook is able to join forces with many leading lifestyle / travel brands to collaborate.

Do you have any plans for geographic expansion in the coming months?

We plan to cover remaining destinations in Asia Pacific by end of the year.

How is the startup ecosystem in Hong Kong and what are your future funding plans.

Ecosystem is definitely catching up in Hong Kong as investors start to see a handful of successful cases.  Many people argue that Hong Kong market is too small, which is indeed true but it has its own advantages for some specific sectors such as logistics, fintech, travel – which have always been Hong Kong’s core competencies.  For example, Hong Kong is the No.1 most traveled city in the world, which makes a lot of sense for a homegrown travel company to successfully emerge into a global brand.

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The last minute hotel booking segment has picked up recently in India with the emergence of Bangalore based mobile startup app, RoomsTonite. They have been in the news with the appointment of former AirBnB India, MD Mohit Srivastava as Chief of Revenues and Partnerships. Also, there is a probable Dubai launch in the pipeline later this year. Globally, the industry has been dominated by HotelTonight and Hong Kong based, HotelQuickly. HotelQuickly which started of simultaneously across six asian countries has made rapid strides in the APAC region and now boasts of presence in over 15 countries. Started by a team which includes, two ex-Rocket Internet executives — HotelQuickly had raised $4.5 million in funding last year.

We had the opportunity to chat with Niklas Olsson, the Marketing Director at HotelQuickly who spoke at length about the app’s journey till now and the road ahead.

The concept of last minute hotel booking has been tried out by a few. There are some who have actually shut-shop as well! What is the key driver for HotelQuickly’s rapid growth.

It’s easy to copy an app, but what you cannot see is how much is going on under the hood. The backend, the integration with hotels, the extranet, the localization with payment gateways, legal compliance in multiple countries, etc. is highly complex and takes a lot of time and expertise in order to master. The app takes about 5-10% of our dev work, the rest goes into what is not visible by the end-user’s eye. Travel is a highly competitive industry. You need to be really good at what you’re doing to be able to stand out and succeed. The ones that have folded didn’t master their niche.

HotelQuickly is quite often termed as a clone of HotelTonight. How does it feel to be referred that way?

Equally often Hotel Tonight is referred to as HotelQuickly concept in the US. It’s a matter of perspective.

It seems that you started with Thailand, which isn’t traditionally perceived as a launchpad for an emerging startup. Did you face any challenges in particular with your launch?

We’ve launched in six countries simultaneously, each one of them exhibiting its own challenges. The launch countries were Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. Six countries, six languages, six different currencies. The challenges were countless, but luckily we had an experienced founding team and support in each of these countries to be aware of pitfalls and to succeed in a localized manner.

The co-founders in your team are spread across different cities. How do you communicate and overcome challenges across geographies.

We’re using the latest tools to communicate and track progress. The whole company is working on slack for written team communication. In addition, we use confluence, asana, jira, zoho, skype, dropbox, google drive, line, xero, and some other department-specific tools that mostly operate in the cloud and work location independent. We have 9 offices across the region. Whether we work remotely with one team or another doesn’t make a difference to our processes and to the company result. As a company policy, anyone can work from any office across APAC. Travel costs need to be covered personally, but we encourage the cross-country collaboration and personal interaction by means of travelling. We are a travel company after all!

Your growth in Asia has been a revelation of sorts. What do you think are the reasons for this trend?

Right time, right place, right concept. A lot comes from observing the trends and then act upon it. Don’t rest, iterate quickly, learn from mistakes and grow continuously. We’ve made countless mistakes along the way, but it was necessary to learn what works and what doesn’t.

We talked about it this one when we met at RISE You are not there in “India” yet which happens to be one of the biggest markets in Asia. Are you planning to enter sometime soon in 2015?

Since the beginning we’ve tried to be focused on a few things and do them really really well. It’s no different when it comes to geographies. While India might look like an attractive market for HotelQuickly, there are numerous challenges that need to be addressed prior to a market entry, in order to be able to succeed in such a large and diverse domestic market.

What’s your understanding of the online hotel booking space in India and the rest of SEA markets?

The markets are very diverse, professional yield management is not yet firmly established in many of these countries, especially with smaller hotel chains. This is something we’re actively helping hotels to master, as HotelQuickly is the perfect tool to optimize revenues per available room. The more mature markets are quicker in adopting HotelQuickly as the benefits are apparent, while in younger markets it takes a bit more time and education from our side. The infrastructure challenges are tremendous but the region is catching up with Western economies fairly quickly.

There have been talks and concerns about hotel loyalty being potentially eroded due to disruption in pricing with last minute bookings. Your take?

We don’t see this as a valid concern. Only if discounts are offered on public websites (like OTAs) the average daily rates could plummet and customers are educated to wait for the last minute to make a booking. As we’re curating our hotels and randomize the offers, we maintain brand loyalty and build our business upon illoyal, infrequent travellers who appreciate quality hotels with discounts, but are not looking for a particular hotel to stay at.

What sort of numbers are you raking in at the moment?

We’ll reach 1,500,000 downloads in about 1 month from now, we have almost 9,000 partner hotels in 250 destinations on the app at the moment. Growth has been very steady over the past 24 months.

One last thing which you’d like to say to TravHQ’s readers…

Download and try our app, redeem code CMISC1 for $30 AUD credit!

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If you have been following the Travel Startups section on TravHQ, by now you would have observed that the online travel industry isn’t just about the OTAs & Airbnbs of the world. There are many travel startups that are shaking various segments of the industry such as trip planning services, hotel bookings apps or even exploring offbeat destinations with locals.

We interacted with an exciting lineup of travel startups on Day 1 at RISE 2015. Our experience on Day 2 with few others, further echoes our belief that this industry is poised to grow at a revolutionary pace, faster than one would imagine.

These startups are solving unique problems either on the consumer side or on the business side. Like most startups, this ride is not going to be a cakewalk as they will face questions about scale, competition and even whether consumer actually needs their services. However, events like RISE, do provide the right platform for these startups to do a self check, understand what they are doing right or wrong with mentorship from peers in the industry. We are enthralled to have connected with so many young startups who are determined to make it big. We have interviewed many of them on Periscope and will very soon have a YouTube feed for you.

Here is a round-up of the travel startups we met on the Day 2 of the RISE Conference.

Singapore based travel startup Travelog offers smart mobile city guides to plan your trips

Hotel Quickly saves travellers time and money by offering dynamic deals at the best hotels in Asia-Pacific

Ireland’s Weestay is a mash-up of CouchSurfing + Airbnb with no cost. In a nutshell, it helps you to find free stay.

Singapore’s Nothing to Hide wants to revolutionise the untapped hotel review segment by providing hoteliers free WiFi in exchange for hotel reviews.

Operating from Hong Kong, Klook is your gateway to find out the best activities to do in Asia.

We will be digging into some of these startups, taking them for a spin and come back with our detailed review sometime soon.

For those who missed the RISE Conference this year, here is why you should definitely attend the next one in 2016 and the Web Summit later this year.

• RISE is your passport to meet like-minded folks such as investors, mentors, potential job seekers and competing startups and the media to share your story  In addition, such events give you the perfect opportunity to identify right partners with whom you can explore collaboration and expand your array of services.
• Other than the exhibiting startups, there are separate tracks such as the Marketing track, Development track and more depending on your industry interests. While 2 days aren’t enough, try to learn and absorb as much as you can.
• Post event networking parties are again a great way to meet more people and talk over some drinks.
• Lastly, it happens in Hong Kong which is located just about 5 hours from India

You can find more updates from RISE here.

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Welcome to Hong Kong where we are reporting live to you from the RISE Summit, which is currently being organized in the picturesque venue of Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre. While we were a little late to join the party on Day 1 and actually made it to the summit not before lunch, once we did step in, it was all crazy indeed.

For those of you who don’t know, RISE Summit is brought to you by the awesome bunch of people who organise the “Web Summit”. In its inaugural edition, we have a completely sell-out crowd with over 5000 people attending it from 70+ countries. There is so much happening at the summit, that 2 days do not seem to be sufficient

Here are some really interesting Travel startups that exhibited on the first day. As you would expect from the travel industry, we had exhibitors from Japan, US, Australia and many other countries at the summit.

From an app that allows you to chat with fellow flyers even when your phone is on airplane mode to an app that uses beacons to enhance your on-road travel experience, we had them all!

Here is a short photologue of some of them, more updates & reviews to follow.

Guillaume Panot, CEO of FlightChat app that allows flyers to chat with each other without the need of a bluetooth connection

Malaysian startup Seeties, helps you to explore Asian cities like a local

TripVerse from United States, aims to be the one-stop trip planning app for your next vacations

Singapore based Triplynr helps you to plan that perfect trip by making it easy to search best itineraries

Representing the home country Hong Kong, Sam the Local is an online market place that connects explorers to locals who take them on the best experiences

Odigo is the trip creating and sharing platform to help you plan your visit to Japan

Representing Western Australia, down-under JamJar helps you to explore bars, beans, art, music & food in Western Australia

You can find more updates from RISE here.

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The much awaited 2 day Rise Conference kicks-off in Hong Kong next week on July 31 – August 1 2015 at the HKCC (Hong Kong Convention Centre). For those of you are not aware, RISE is the first ever tech-summit in Asia brought to you by the same team that organizes Web Summit, held annually in Dublin every November. The event gives a fantastic opportunity to hear and meet exciting startups from across the globe that are solving business & consumer problems.

The inaugural edition of RISE conference also has a line-up of Travel startups from countries such as Singapore, Hong Kong, USA and Australia. Here is our ultimate list of 7 startups exhibiting their travel prowess at RISE.

Image Credits: Rise Conference Facebook Page

Travelog.me, Singapore

Singapore based Travelog is an iPhone only mobile travel guide helping you to plan your next trip in an easy way. By downloading the app, you can join a community of like-minded travellers, bloggers, local experts and receive tailored recommendations on top things to do.

We will be keen to understand how are they are different from similar services and where exactly do they fit in the traveller’s cycle?

Wanderlust, Australia

Australian startup, Wanderlust claims to build a travel tribe consisting of strangers from different countries enabling travellers to take help when in need. Can they change they way we travel? We’ll find out at RISE

Jamjar, Australia

Another startup from Australia, Jamjar is a travel discovery app for the explorers who are on a constant quest to find out the most happening places. They seem to be focussed on the Australian region for now but we will be keen to chat-up with the Jamjar team for more info.

Klook, Hong Kong

Representing host country Hong Kong, Klook caught our attention from the list. They are providing unique travel experiences across entire APAC at discounted rates. For instance, Bicycling experience at Kyoto or exploring Bangkok on a Scooter.

However, the competition seems to be very high for services providing offbeat and custom travel experiences. We will know Klook’s future roadmap soon.

Weestay, Hong Kong

Weestay is also from Hong Kong and their single line pitch is that they combine CouchSurfing & Airbnb removing the element of cost from between. Simply speaking, you can find free accommodation via network of your friends using Weestay.

Their focus seems to be backpackers who are on a shoe-string budget. Who else are they targeting? We’ll learn more at RISE.

HotelQuickly, Hong Kong

HotelQuickly is the Uber for hotels in APAC providing last minute dynamic deals on your bookings. We had recently reviewed an Indian startup RoomsTonite that seems to be pretty similar in-terms of overall offering. More on HotelQuickly coming your way pretty soon!

Tripverse, USA

Completing the list is Tripverse, a travel startup coming all the way from United States. Tripverse is an offline readable itinerary viewer that makes creating, viewing, and sharing travel plans simple and easy. There is no dearth of itinerary planning apps but we are optimistic that Tripverse has a unique positioning and target market. We’ll discover more of that, when we catch-up.

So if you are a travel startup coming to RISE, we will be keen to meet you in person, hear your stories and understand how you are making tripping experience better  If we have missed you out from the above list, please drop us a note at editor@travhq.com.

You can find more updates from RISE here.

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