United Overseas Bank (Malaysia Bhd) (UOB Malaysia) launches The Travel Insider, the first online travel marketplace designed to inspire customers and simplifies for them to search, plan and book their holidays.
The Travel Insider offers more than 1,000 travel, shopping and dining deals across Southeast Asia, Japan, Korea, Australia, United Kingdom and United States by tapping into UOB’s regional network and local expertise.
It was first launched in Singapore in 2018, The Travel Insider is the collaboration between United Overseas Bank (UOB) and more than 500 leading companies from the airline, hospitality and travel industries featuring competitive range of flight, accommodation and tour deals.
“Travel is a high priority among our customers, with one in five UOB Malaysia debit and credit cardmembers travelling abroad at least once in 2019. We have also seen a shift in the way our customers plan and book their travels, with 81 per cent of their travel-related spend last year taking place online, a 34 per cent increase from the previous year,” Ronnie Lim, Managing Director and Country Head of Personal Financial Services, UOB Malaysia, said.
Travellers spend hours reviewing online and offline resources to create the best itinerary for their holiday. The amount of data the traveller needs to process is time consuming and also cumbersome. Hence, with The UOB Travel Insider, travellers can have top insider tips, curated travel guides, and proposed itineraries with best competitive deals in one platform.
Creating a smooth-sailing travel planning journey
UOB shortlisted top 24 travel destinations based on UOB card spend and data aggregated supplied by its partners, Agoda, Booking.com, Expedia and Singapore Airlines to come up with a designed content for each destination, to make researching what to do in each destination simple, inspiring and fun.
The online marketplace also has a planning tool that makes it easy for the traveller to create and to save their own itinerary and then to share it with travel buddies who in turn can give comments and suggest their own preferences for the holiday.
In recognising the trend for travellers seeking genuine experiences over standard sightseeing holidays, UOB Malaysia has tapped the local knowledge of 29 insiders who live in the most popular destination cities. These travel aficionados provide personal insights into the most appealing and satisfying experiences in their hometowns. Their tips can be added to the proposed itineraries.
Mr. Damien Pfirsch, Vice President, Strategic Partnerships and Programs, Agoda, said, “Agoda aims to help anyone travel anywhere, and we are excited that our partnership with UOB Malaysia will help connect more Malaysian travellers to destinations worldwide. We know what Asian travellers want and we are able to offer them choices from a wide range of 2.5 million properties worldwide at the best prices. With tips from the new portal, travellers can draw inspiration from a trove of travel content to plan their travels, and also easily search, book and pay for the best-priced accommodation from Agoda’s network, all on a single platform.”
