Chaiwat Topitumatukhun opened his Postcard Resort in northern Thailand, he had the idea to open a boutique hotel and use the internet to reach out to the people around the world rather than going after the travel agents in specific areas. So he went and got his hotel on the best online travel sites like Agoda.com and Priceline.com INC and within 2 weeks lots of bookings were received from everyone around the world. "It's a cost savings to us, as opposed to relying only on travel agents
on the street, and we can reach the world by using their system," said
Mr. Chaiwat, who has also set up a Web site for his property.Agoda is really having an Asian push with plans in place to open more Asian offices and also they have their site in many Asian languages too to reach out to more people. Citibank estimates the Asia-Pacific online hotel and lodging market totaled more than $11 billion in bookings last year and is on track to reach almost $20 billion by 2012. That would compare with $33 billion in the U.S. and $16 billion in Western Europe in 2012. The potential here in Asia is always growing and can only be expected to increase.
Source: http://online.wsj.com
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