T

ravel website tiket.com has announced plans to expand into new areas locally and internationally in 2016, taking advantage of growing e-commerce activity.

Commenting on the state of e-commerce in the country, tiket.com co-founder and chief communications officer Gaery Undarsa said the travel industry was now unable to avoid increasing competition from websites such as tiket.com, which cater to consumers'€™ growing use of digital technology.

The company aims to increase partnerships with hotels and airlines outside major Indonesian cities as well as in the Southeast Asian region. Gaery said the expansion plans correlated with increasing demand from travelers to book their journeys on the internet.

'€œThe online travel industry'€™s growth projection as well as the public'€™s increasing trust in digital services makes tiket.com positive on [the] outlook for 2016. Demand has been strong in cities outside of Jakarta,'€ Gaery said on Tuesday.

In 2015, tiket.com reportedly grew over 100 percent due to a surge in hotel and airline ticket reservations. Hotel bookings through the site more than doubled from 2014, while airline ticket reservations increased by 150 percent. The number of users also doubled from last year.

Gaery voiced his optimism that the relatively stable macroeconomic condition of the country leading up to 2016 would prove beneficial for tiket.com as well as for the growth of e-commerce and the travel industry in general.

Tiket.com formed partnerships with 14 airlines, 180,000 hotels and 15 banks across the archipelago in 2015. The company also called for brick-and-mortar travel agencies in Indonesia to develop the business to business (B2B) sector with e-commerce platforms, so that the online travel industry would flourish.

According to data from market research firm Phocuswright and travel company Expedia, hotel bookings through online travel agents in Indonesia are poised to increase by Rp 2 trillion every year, due to a 200 to 300 percent consistent increase in online travel market usage.

Tiket.com said 80 percent of its Indonesian customers opted for domestic rather than international trips.

Owned by PT Global Tiket Network, tiket.com has been active since 2013 and has seen significant growth since its inception, reporting 20 to 50 percent growth every month in its first year of operation.