REBEL BEACH CLUB LE PIRATE

HOT TALKS HOTEL INTEL WITH TRAVELIKO

Hotel Intel: Apart from 10% commission and giving back to society, what other incentives are there for hotels that want to work with you?

Traveliko: The 10% commission rate is by far the main reason hotels want to work with us. But, we also believe in creating a synergistic relationship with our hotel customers. We do not spend our marketing budget on Google Ad words, for example, to bid against our customers on their own keywords.

We believe that to be predatory. Instead, we use analytics and metrics to understand their customers better, and we have worked closely with large hotel chains in Southeast Asia to find out what they actually want from a new OTA in terms of features and services. The two most requested features that came up were 1. better insights into customers and their behavior and 2. different ways to sell their inventory and supplementary products such as packages, Spa, F&B and Activities.

We have listened, and we think the hotels are going to be very excited when they get to play with our new tools. That’s all we can say about this for now.

Hotel Intel: For end customers, why would they book with Traveliko?

Traveliko: Firstly, we offer a more personal and empowering experience. Surprisingly few customers are aware that the hotels they see on the first page of a search, when using one of the big OTAs, are not necessarily the hotels that would fit them best. They are simply hotels that are commercially more interesting and likely more profitable to the OTA. Traveliko breaks that paradigm by providing a non-partial map display with all the hotels equally visible but with the right kind of customized filters.

Traveliko is all about showing you what fits you best. We focus on how travelers like to travel and we suggest them hotels that fit their existing lifestyles. This gives travelers the best choice and they will be overall happier with the hotel they stay with. We have also created a loyalty program that encourage traveler to engage with us and hotels more. The main point is that we feel strongly about the charitable aspects that Traveliko represents and we have pledged to donate 20% of the net commission we earn for each booking to charitable organizations. In practice, the users will be allocating our donation to the cause of their choice – Animal , People or Planet – at the end of the booking process. Everyone in Traveliko has worked hands-on with some form of charity, whether helping build a house, painting an orphanage, or making a playground for underprivileged kids.

The feeling of helping others is priceless, and we want to recreate that feeling for travellers. To that end, Traveliko partners with local grassroots organizations and NGOs in those places where we operate to offer projects we can commit to and report back on to our customers.

What Traveliko is not: We are not affiliated to any existing OTA We are not a niche OTA focusing on any specific market or inventory type

Hotelintel: What's your marketing plan to this to kick this all off? We cannot and do not want to compete against our giant online competitors who have very large budgets to spend on Google Ads and other search engines on a yearly basis. Traveliko aims to disrupt the online booking industry by becoming a bespoke online travel agent through offering better services using our new technology platform, our rewards and referral program, by word-of-mouth, through social media, and through genuine PR activities. Our brand pillars carry our marketing message and we intend to change the travel industry in a similar way.

Organic farming and product awareness are already changing the food industry. People eat better. We want to create an opportunity for people to travel and stay better. Ms. Natalie Glebova, a former Miss Universe, is Traveliko’s Brand Ambassador and she is already helping us share those key messages with travellers, hotels and the media.

From small but genuine beginnings we are working hard to become a respected and viable alternative. Once customers try Traveliko for the first time, they will know what we mean and there will be no reason for them to book with other OTAs.

REBEL BEACH CLUB LE PIRATE JUMPS INTO BED WITH GEN-Z TRAVELLERS AS IT TARGETS 20 PROPERTIES BY 2020 WITHIN AND BEYOND INDONESIA

With three clubs already open in Greater Bali the brand takes to the sea with Explorer Cruises

JAKARTA, INDONESIA – Indonesia’s rebel beach club brand Le Pirate has announced plans to expand its footprint within the country and throughout Asia. In the span of three short years the father son team of Fredo and Louka Taffin has created a blueprint for fast-paced growth with their social beach club and hotel concept.

Long-time Bali design guru Fredo Taffin came up with the idea for Le Pirate after facing the challenge of building resort hotels in remote tropical locations. His concept was to appealing distill accommodation options into eco-friendly, pre-fab bungalows that are fast and cost efficient to build but do not destroy the islands’ beaches.

Taffin teamed up with his millennial son Louka, who has already become a successful hospitality entrepreneur at the age 27. Both of them hated the way resorts were all about welcome drinks, grim soulless buffets, and designed to put guests in a virtual lock-down, keeping them away from each other.

Louka explains, “traditional hoteliers are obsessed by guest rooms and forget that hospitality from its earliest roots in pub hotels, is all about meeting people, going local and not just about the four walls you sleep in. At Le Pirate we don’t want heads on beds, we want bums at the beach club, travellers who have a pulse and aren’t afraid to use it.”

Today, the brand’s pathway to expansion is clearly its points of difference – being able to pre-fabricate beach club hotels and assemble them on-site complete with fit-out in under six months from start to finish. Investors often have to wait a decade to generate a good return, with a typical Le Pirate project; it is two to three years.

From the onset, Le Pirate’s first beach club hotel in Nusa Ceningan, off the coast of Bali, gathered a strong reputation with he social media and smartphone set. Images, YouTube videos and chats on Facebook, Twitter and beyond have been a strong driver of direct bookings. Further momentum came with the opening of a larger property in Gili Trawangan and most recently in the buzzing destination of Labuan Bajo in Flores.

As for the shift into floating beach club cruisers, tagged as Explorer, Louka says, “we wanted to take one of Indonesia’s key attributes, the spectacular ocean and numerous islands, and make them more accessible in a fun, in an authentic and natural way. No pretentions here, its bums on boats, and the more the merrier.”

Looking to expansion, Fredo and Louka have teamed up with hospitality expert Bill Barnett, Founder of Asia-based C9 Hotelworks, to grow the model into one that is now pushing outside Indonesia.

With Le Pirate International established in Singapore, the team is working on pushing out licensing and branding model and engaging developers who want to enter the hotel business, but who don’t know where or how to start. The “hotel in a box” concept covers design, training, fitout, as well as management systems that don’t take a rocket scientist to run.

Currently the development pipeline is focused on the Philippines, with its enormous 7,107 islands, and also in burgeoning destinations like Sri Lanka and Myanmar.

Fredo comments, “wherever beach bums are headed, we will be there with our beach clubs, boats and an ability to innovate in emerging locations such as remote islands. Travellers at any age still have those childhood dreams of being a pirate, and our clubs and cruises are meant to bring back the thrills, chills and adventure of getting outside those four same hotel walls. We aren’t just hitting the millennial market. We are keen to build a brand that will also fit Gen-Z.”

www.LePirate.com FREDO ADDS, “WE ARE BREAKING DOWN THE WALLS OF HOTEL OWNERSHIP THAT USED TO BE MEASURED IN DOG YEARS BUT HAVE NOW BEEN BE ACCELERATED INTO REAL TIME.”