T

hree of Indonesia’s largest tour companies have chipped in more than US$10 million to revamp a local hotel booking website, saying that they expect the site to ride on the exponential growth of the domestic travel industry and lay the groundwork for more web-oriented services.

Publicly listed PT Panorama Sentrawisata, Smailing Tour and PT Dwidaya Tour and Travel are the major investors behind the overhaul of the website, rajakamar.com, to boost its presence among domestic travelers.

Tourism and Creative Economy Ministry data show that 20 million Indonesians traveled domestically during the June and July 2011 holiday season alone, while the total number of domestic tourists amounted to 125 million with 239 million trips.

Established in 2007, the website is currently owned by the three leading tour companies, in addition to two other stakeholders, under the consortium Raja Kamar International. The $10 million is part of a $20 million investment to develop Raja Kamar International.

Scott Blume, CEO of Raja Kamar International, said they expected to “get our money back in three to five years” given the impressive growth in the domestic travel industry.

The growth, he said, was fueled by the country’s strong GDP and the proliferation of low cost carriers, which has prompted people to travel more, and hence increase the demand for hotels and travel agents. These aspects would also improve the market potential for websites offering hotel bookings.

“This [market potential] will grow 20 percent annually for the next five years,” he said.

He added that the company expected monthly traffic to double by the end of December after the company launched big marketing campaigns to promote the website.

He pointed out that the company aimed to capture a market of domestic travelers, especially those new to online bookings, by creating a product high in local content, such as by using Bahasa Indonesia on the website and establishing a domestic call center to handle inquiries.

He further noted that this was their competition strategy against other similar websites with foreign ownership.

Besides making bookings through Raja Kamar, people can also reserve rooms through other websites, such as Agoda, which is in English. Agoda is currently the 42nd most visited site in Indonesia, based on data from web information company Alexa.com.

Scott added that the website was linked to around 1,300 hotels spread across the country, and planned to add around 100 more hotels to the list this year.

Meanwhile, Agoda offers bookings to more than 2,000 hotels but in only 10 major cities.

Scott further pointed out that the website handled room bookings equal to 750 nights annually, and aimed to increase the number to 1 million in the next 12 months.