S

cheduling a vacation for the high season sometimes can be a headache, especially in finding the right place
to stay in.

Planning way ahead is the key for a perfect holiday.

One of the latest websites for globetrotters to explore when planning vacation is pegipegi.com, an online hotel booking service covering more than 700 hotels and villas in dozens of cities across the country.

Designed to serve both local and international travelers on business or holiday travel, the website claims that it can instantly present the instant availability of all hotels and villas in Indonesia, along with complete tourism destination guides.

“We have already talked with several airlines to connect their systems with ours to allow the customers to book their tickets. We also plan to create travel packages,” pegipegi.com CEO Davy Makimian said.

Pegipegi.com has been launched under the name of PT Go Online Destination (GOLD) Co. Ltd., a partnership between PT Alternative Media Group (AMG) Co. Ltd., PT Alternative Vision Indonesia (Altavindo) Co. Ltd. and Recruit Co. Ltd, Japan.

“Travel is a very huge industry in Japan — almost US$40 billion a year in hotel bookings alone,” Recruit Co. Ltd. Japan CEO Hisayuki Idekoba told The Jakarta Post.

Idekoba says that in the early days when Recruit Co. launched jalan.net, there were only an average of 100 bookings. After 12 years, they book an average of 80,000 to 100,000 reservations through the portal every day.

“Our target is that in three years we can achieve 100,000 bookings and traffic of 4 million clicks on the website,” says Davy.

He said the target was made after considering Indonesia’s lack of infrastructure, which is unlike that in Jakarta. Moreover, Internet accessibility penetrated the whole Japan a long way back.

Altavindo’s chief executive officer, Kevin Yaphon Sanjoto, says that the number of credit cards, which is the easiest method of payment, is another challenge.

In Japan, he said there are some 150 million credit card users out of its 110 million people, while Indonesia only has some 15 million credit card users out of its 240 million people.

“Although the number [of credit card users] is still a few, actually it grows quickly. The growth is estimated at 20 percent annually here in Indonesia,” Kevin says.

Tourism and Creative Economy Minister Mari Elka Pangestu, who attended the website’s launch, expressed her support of the company, saying the business would flourish if it was attached to related business in the creative industry.

With Internet penetration at 11 percent, or 40 million users, across the country, she said increased accessibility offered a huge business potential although currently, not many people engaged in online business or e-commerce.

Mari did not recall the percentage but estimated around 10 percent of local Internet users have made online purchases worth Rp 3.7 billion.

The company, she said, could support the ministry’s plan to raise the number of tourists.

The ministry, she said, recorded 245 million domestic trips last year and set the target for 260 million this year.

For foreign travelers, the ministry has recorded some 6 million trips last year and aims to get 10 million trips in 2012.