P

anorama Group, the country'€™s largest tour and travel company, is strengthening its e-commerce business division in a bid to attract more tech-savvy young travelers, whose numbers keep growing.

'€œThe company is not focusing on younger travelers as its core market yet, due to their limited purchasing power,'€ Panorama Group vice president for e-commerce Hans Tjandra said on Tuesday.

'€œBut the younger generation will eventually take over the market. We need to anticipate this by enhancing our e-commerce business.'€

Hans declined to reveal the number of travelers who booked their trips through the group'€™s websites.

He did, however, say that the contribution of the group'€™s e-commerce sales was expected to increase from 10 percent today to 25 percent in 2017.

According to Hans, the company is set to put aside a total of US$10 million in investment over the next five years in order to develop its e-commerce system. He said that 70 percent of the total budget would be used to develop the firm'€™s ticket booking system.

'€œOur system is not mature yet. For instance, for now, we can only offer domestic flight tickets on our website, and even that is limited to a few airlines. We are currently developing the website so it can also offer international flight tickets from other airlines including Cathay Pacific and Singapore Airlines,'€ Hans said.

'€œIt sounds simple, but it'€™s actually a very complicated and time-consuming process. We are hopeful that our ticket booking engine will mature by June 2015,'€ he added.

Currently, Hans said, sales from the group'€™s e-commerce division come mostly from its hotel reservation system, bookpanorama.com, which contributes around 40 percent of total e-commerce sales.

'€œThe remaining 60 percent of our e-commerce sales comes from panorama-tours.com, myhotelfinder.com, travelicious.co.id and phm.co.id,'€ Hans said.

He expressed his opinion that travel business players needed to immediately shift their business process to e-commerce in order to adapt to the characteristics of millennial travelers.

Millenial travelers, who according to Hans are those born after 1982, are very adaptable to change, demand flexibility and are, most importantly, very price-sensitive.

'€œTravel business players will have to be able to meet their needs and offer them flexibility,'€ he said. '€œIt is easier to sell travel packages and flight tickets to one CEO, for example, than to sell low-cost flight tickets to 10 millennial budget-conscious travelers. It is unavoidable that the traditional market will soon decrease and be replaced by the millennial market,'€ he continued.