Southeast Asia’s Fragmented Tours Sector Gets Long-Awaited Tech Upgrade
Photo Credit: A view of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Source: Unsplash. Photo by Xiaoxin Shen on Unsplash / Xiaoxin Shen, Unsplash
Skift Take
Southeast Asia, known for its tech-savvy, mobile first consumers, has an experiences sector that is 80 percent offline, presenting widespread opportunities for the region's tours and activities landscape to become digitized. Stat.
When you think of Southeast Asia, one automatically assumes the region is largely tech-enabled with its super-app culture and payment wallets that leapfrogged traditional banking; all fluidly switched on for digital purchases. But this couldn't be further from the truth for the tours and activities landscape across the region.
Southeast Asia's experiences sector is decades behind the hotel industry in terms of technology adoption, while Singapore operated major attractions, like its Universal Studios at Sentosa Resorts, without any application programming interface (API) connectivity.
Riding the tail end of pandemic recovery, the region continues to see a significant digital boom, forcing changes to how experiences are being booked and planned, as consumer purchasing habits are driven by digital connectivity, now more than ever.
In Southeast Asia specifically, the shift to online lifestyle services spiked in
