KOTA KINABALU: SabahTravel.com was officially launched, here, Tuesday not only to make Sabah more known and accessible to people across the globe but help the State tourism industry players to grow further and globalise their business while keeping it local.
The B2B2C digital travel booking platform featured information that people want to know about Sabah and make plans to travel to the State. For the industry players, it provides product and inventory management, data analytics and reports that allow them to analyse their business performance and easily manage their bookings.
Sabahan Kenji Yeo, founder of SabahTravel.Com, said these features come together to form a seamless booking process that easily connects local Sabah tour agents, business owners, transport and accommodation providers to travellers worldwide.
“This platform aims to increase exposure and revenue for operators, provide a solution to offload inventory in the fastest way possible, thereby optimising the turnaround time, frees up capital and maximising economical goals,” he said at the launching ceremony held at Shangri-La’s Tanjung Aru Resort and Spa.
By simplifying travellers’ experiences, vendors can now secure deals seamlessly 24/7, said Yeo, adding this makes it easier for tourists to choose Sabah as a travel destination.
“So it is really a win-win situation,” he said, adding that the journey to creating the platform has been a long one, who first came up with the idea in 2014.
Looking from the perspective of a traveller, he understands one of the challenges comes with not knowing what all the available tourism products in Sabah are.
“To date, there are at least 1,000 plus local tourism products and services, but their online presence is so fragmented that they do not have much visibility to their target customers.
“We created SabahTravel.com with the goal of simplifying technology for their business to thrive in this competitive industry.
“With this platform, our aim is to bring together and curate all of Sabah’s tours, activities, accommodation and transport providers onto one single platform,” said Yeo.
According to him, he and his experienced in-house global team started developing the booking platform in 2017. Two years down the road and their hard work is finally paying off though it was not without challenges.
“One of the challenges we faced was working with the programmers and making sure they knew what we wanted as most of them were unfamiliar with the tourism industry.
“Fortunately, we have built a strong in-house IT team to make this platform feasible by ensuring the various elements of this framework are developed successfully,” he said.
On his vision for SabahTravel.com, Yeo hopes that it will help provide a better life for the local people and the community.
He said his love for Sabah was also what inspired him to create a travel platform for local businesses to generate better revenue.
“With Sabah’s tourism industry booming, the State has been climbing the ranks to become one of Malaysia’s top tourism destinations.
“Not only will we see an improved economy in the long run, it will also help to ensure lower income families and their children have access to quality education and healthcare,” he said.
The support of Sabah Tourism Board (STB), Matta members, hoteliers, tourism product owners and community tourism members is important in ensuring the platform’s success, he said, while confident that the platform will create a better future for Sabah’s tourism industry with his and his team determination to learn, innovate and improve.
Meanwhile, Sabah Tourism Board (STB) General Manager Suzaini Sabdin Ghani, who officiated at the launching ceremony, was pleased that Sabah has been given a travel platform that is fully focused on the destination.
“I was told that the platform is open to all local service providers and tour operators which gives travellers the freedom of choice to travel to Sabah in their own way.”
She was pleased to know that SabahTravel is using the 17 Sustainable Development Goals set out by the United Nations as their set of values.
