UOB Indonesia launches The Travel Insider, the first online marketplace by a bank in Southeast Asia for hassle-free travel planning

Jakarta, 20 January 2020 – PT Bank UOB Indonesia (UOB Indonesia) today launched in Indonesia The Travel Insider, the first online travel marketplace designed by a bank in Southeast Asia. The Travel Insider is a one-stop shop where customers can search for, plan and book their holidays.

First launched in Singapore in 2018, The Travel Insider is the result of a collaboration between United Overseas Bank (UOB) and more than 500 leading companies from the airline, hospitality and travel industries to create an online destination where visitors can secure competitive flight, accommodation and tour deals. Currently, The Travel Insider offers more than 1,000 travel, shopping and dining deals across Southeast Asia, Japan, Korea, Australia, United Kingdom and United States.

Jacquelyn Tan, Head of Personal Financial Services Singapore, UOB, said, “Given the significant role travel plays in our customers’ lives across the region, we have tapped UOB’s regional network and local expertise to bring The Travel Insider to more of our cardmembers, including in Indonesia. With this regional expansion, we are the first bank in Southeast Asia with an online travel marketplace to bring more convenience to our customers in planning their holidays.”

Travellers are known to spend hours trawling through online and offline resources just to create the itinerary for the best holiday possible. To make it hassle-free for them, UOB gathered top local insider tips, curated content to create travel guides and proposed itineraries and worked with its partners to ensure that competitive and extensive deals can be found easily in one location. The Travel Insider enables them to make online payment directly on the same platform after they have chosen their travel package. The Travel Insider also has a planning tool that makes it easy for the traveler to create and to save their own itinerary all in one platform.

Dessy Masri, Head of Cards and Payments, UOB Indonesia, said, “Travel spend is one of the largest spend categories among UOB Indonesia credit cardmembers, who made 30 per cent more of such transactions in 2019. We also saw a 44 per cent growth in travelrelated transactions online, outpacing the 11 per cent rise in bookings made via offline travel agents. The Travel Insider will meet the preferences of our customers who prefer to transact online.”

Inspiration, insight and easy planning
In building The Travel Insider, UOB shortlisted various top travel destinations based on UOB card spend and data aggregated based on insights from its partners such as Expedia, Singapore Airlines, Agoda, Booking.com, Klook and KKday.

In recognising the increasing trend for travellers to seek genuine experiences over standard sightseeing holidays, UOB has tapped the local knowledge of insiders who live in the most popular destination cities. These travel aficionados are professionals from diverse backgrounds such as architecture, culture and landscape and who provide their personal insights into the most appealing experiences in their hometowns. Their tips can be added to the proposed itineraries.

The Travel Insider taps the application programming interfaces (APIs) of Agoda, Expedia, Booking.com and Singapore Airlines to draw the best options from more than a million hotel and flight possibilities.

For further information, please visit thetravelinsider.co/id.