KUALA LUMPUR (Aug 18): Travel ecosystem players cannot afford to overlook the importance of offering digital services as more travellers depend on such platforms to book and plan their holidays, said Megawaty Khie, Google Cloud’s regional director for Indonesia and Malaysia.
“With seven in 10 urban digital consumers in Malaysia already using digital travel services, this industry is expected to grow 56% year-on-year and contribute US$8 billion (RM36.4 billion) to Malaysia's digital economy by 2025.
“Google search trends for the period of July 16, 2022 to July 15, 2023 suggest that adjacent industries can seize opportunities presented by Malaysia's tourism rebound. In the past year, search queries related to travel credit card and travel insurance have grown by over 750% and over 250% respectively.
“Financial institutions must therefore find ways to deliver tailored offerings to travellers who are seeking exclusive rewards for spending on tourism-related goods and services,” she said.
On Aug 1, Google Cloud announced strategic collaborations with Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB) and Asia Mobiliti, which are adopting Google Cloud’s open data cloud to influence tourism growth and deliver sustainable, digital-first travel experiences.
With search queries related to “medical tourism” in Malaysia growing by over 60% during the same period of time, there is an opportunity for healthcare providers to better engage individuals who are looking to visit Malaysia for specialised medical treatment.
Additionally, Megawaty said search queries related to digital nomad visas in Malaysia had grown by over 350% during the same period of time.
“This creates opportunities for industries such as real estate and hospitality, food and grocery, financial services, and healthcare. [We] should pursue a deeper understanding of this emerging category of consumers and consider designing products and services that cater to their specific needs.
“This could include offering co-working spaces, short-term housing options, on-demand delivery, cross-border health insurance, and multi-currency savings accounts,” she added.
Megawaty said there is often more focus given to areas like aviation and accommodation in terms of tourism economic impact.
“Our analysis also highlights tourism’s impact on other sectors, from financial services to healthcare, to retail and transportation. We’re committed to empowering organisations across industries with intelligent, data-driven capabilities to make smarter business decisions and be part of an integrated ecosystem that delivers world-class visitor experiences.
“Our collaborations with MAHB and Asia Mobiliti, supported by our partners CloudMile and PointStar, will enhance their ability to serve travellers with personalised, digital-first offerings powered by our secure and scalable open data cloud. This also builds on our existing work with the airasia Superapp to help micro, small and medium enterprises to grow their revenue streams.”
To stay ahead of spikes in passenger traffic in and out of its five international airports and 17 domestic airports in Malaysia, MAHB — with support from CloudMile — has migrated its digital real estate to Google Cloud’s open, scalable, secure, and energy-efficient infrastructure.
As a result, MAHB is starting to benefit from Google Cloud’s dynamic autoscaling capabilities, which enable the information technology systems or dashboards to handle up to 10 times their normal workloads with a smooth user experience, before automatically scaling down to reduce costs when additional computing resources are no longer needed.
By using Google Cloud’s database management services to break down internal data silos, MAHB is enhancing its ability to push real-time airport and flight information to millions of passengers, thereby allowing them to enjoy smoother experiences from check-in to immigration to boarding to baggage collection.
MAHB chief information officer Vijaykumar Dayinde said it is critical that MAHB find the ability to both optimise costs and ramp up operations.
“Google Cloud’s open data cloud will provide a strong yet flexible foundation for MAHB to fulfil our vision of becoming a global airport group that champions connectivity and sustainability, and serve as the gateway for tourists to discover and enjoy all that Malaysia has to offer.”
There is also a growing consciousness of tourism’s environmental impact, with sustainability emerging as a key consideration when people design their travel itineraries.
From July 16, 2022 to July 15, 2023, search queries related to “ecotourism” and “sustainable transport” in Malaysia increased by more than 700% and more than 160% respectively. In fact, close to four in 10 digital consumers in Malaysia have declared their willingness to pay more for a sustainable product or service, Google found.
To enable seamless and more sustainable multimodal transport experiences for tourists in Malaysia, Asia Mobiliti, a fast-growing mobility technology start-up, is building and running its mobility-as-a-service platform for businesses and consumers entirely on Google Cloud’s open, scalable, secure, and energy-efficient infrastructure.
With support from PointStar, Asia Mobiliti has also deployed Google Cloud’s advanced analytics and business intelligence tools to give its business-to-business customers access to real-time insights that help them better respond to commuters’ needs.
By leveraging Asia Mobiliti’s ability to ingest and analyse data across different modes of transport and accurately forecast demand using its proprietary machine learning algorithms, an airport operator or a public transport operator could, for instance, offer demand-responsive transit (DRT) services to malls or hotels in the city.
DRT services mean a passenger vehicle, such as a bus or van, is dispatched in response to demand, optimising ridership and cost of trip, and ensuring travel resiliency and reliability with intelligent routing for the quickest and most fuel-efficient routes.
Ramachandran Muniandy, the chief executive officer and a co-founder of Asia Mobiliti, said the concepts of sustainable tourism and sustainable mobility are deeply intertwined.
“An effective multimodal public transport system reduces the need for private or single occupancy vehicles. This then translates into reduced road congestion and carbon emissions. It was a clear choice for us to build our platform on Google Cloud’s open data cloud, given its leadership in data science and it being the only cloud provider that is powering its infrastructure and services using 100% renewable energy.”