The Philippine Airlines (PAL) has forged a partnership with Traveloka, Southeast Asia’s leading travel platform, to strengthen tourism growth in the Philippines and in the region.
The flag carrier strategic and Indonesia’s travel and ticketing company formalized the pact in a memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed in Manila three days earlier.
“We are pleased to forge this new partnership with Traveloka, which will help us fortify our connection with the global market. Philippine Airlines has always made it a top concern to build, sustain and develop direct air links to countries in the region and beyond, which means reaching out to travelers living all over the world,” Captain Stanley K. Ng, president and chief operating officer (COO) at PAL, said.
“Our intent is for the partnership to unlock new travel options for our customers to fly with Philippine Airlines to various wonderful destinations all around the Philippines, and to diverse international destinations as well,” he added.
Based on the data from the Philippines Department of Tourism, some 83,000 tourists from around Southeast Asia visited the Philippines early on in the pandemic of 2020, a sharp drop from the over 526,000 in 2019 as border restrictions bite.
By end-2022, however, and given efforts to recharge the economy and the tourism sector, the number of Southeast Asian visitors heading to the Philippines reached 188 thousand, increasing by more than double.
Iko Putera, chief executive at Transport Traveloka, said that in the post-pandemic period, people’s enthusiasm for business and tourism travel has increased along with the return of consumer confidence in traveling. The surge is mainly driven by the high rate of vaccinations and the re-opening of international borders.
Travel data to the Philippines from around the region from 2021 to 2022 increased eight fold, according to Traveloka internal data. The number of passengers using the flight network of Philippine Airlines to various international destinations almost doubled.
Traveloka has since expanded to six countries in Southeast Asia, providing easy access through the adoption of technology to fulfill consumers travel aspirations in the region.
