Online travel and tourism services market has tremendous growth opportunities in Asia since at present it covers only 10 per cent of the market, experts said at the recent ITB Asia, a major trade show for the Asian travel market.

They also urged the travel industry to take advantage of new technologies, particularly Smartphone applications, to reach more clients and personalise their experiences.

 “Mobile is the new default. More than one in four of our global transactions on Hotels.com in the second quarter of this year was booked on a mobile device and we are investing in technology to enable our hotel partners to reach travellers in the way that they want to shop,” said Mieke De Schepper, vice president, APAC, the Expedia Group.

According to Zhengrong Tang, chief technology officer, Tuniu Corporation, around 200 million Chinese travellers made bookings through their PCs last year, jumping from more than 100 million in 2013, while mobile bookings reached a massive 134 million in 2014 compared to just 45 million in 2013.

“Today the tourism industry needs to cater to a great diversity of traveller types as people seek individual and personalised experiences. The growing Asian middle class with its varied travel requirements provides great opportunities for travel and tourism. Thus, the industry needs to stay innovative making use of the latest travel technology and the opportunities provided by digitalisation,” said Dr Michael Frenzel, chairman, World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC).

“Products and services need to be available online, even bookable via mobile devices, and the tourism industry has to actively engage in social media and stay in touch with travellers throughout the customer journey. Further, it is of outmost importance to be able to collect information and to utilise the aggregated data to tailor products to customer needs,” he said.

Travel today starts online and ends online, from the moment customers browse and book tour packages to the time they end and share their experience and reviews online, experts said.

ITB Asia saw delegates from across all sectors of the travel industry, including trailblazers and pioneers from leading MICE, corporate and leisure companies, convene to network and identify new business opportunities in Asia, particularly in the Chinese market.

According to Donald Yu, CEO and founder of Tuniu.com, a leading online travel portal in China, online travel and tourism is a business with huge returns on investment (ROI).  By focusing on what Chinese tourists consider the most when using an online service, businesses can capitalise on the ROIs and develop their operations in the region. And Tuniu has done exactly that by focusing brand building and high quality service.”

CEO of Alitrip Sherri Wu echoed the same view when speaking about e-retail giant Alibaba’s move into the online travel sector.

“With an already existing large retail space online, our move into the travel sector was only expected. With China being the fastest growing outbound traveller market, our view was to create a simplified online booking experience for these customers whereby they could directly interact with merchants and book a trip online.”

The year 2014 saw over 100 million Chinese travelling overseas and the trend accelerated in the first half of 2015, data shows.

Interestingly, of the total travel population, 64 per cent constituted female travellers. Studies by Tuniu showed that Chinese in the age group of between 25 and 35 years travelled most (44.9 per cent); followed closely by the 35 and 45 year age bracket (26.7 per cent).

Chinese travellers are big spenders too, reporting an estimated $165 billion in travel spend in 2014 alone, reports said.

Simpler booking platforms, transparency of operations and innovative products are key to bagging a large share of the Chinese market, said experts  

Looking at future trends and potential markets, travel majors anticipate artificial intelligence to be the next step in technology and the cruise industry to be the next big focus in the years to come.