App to bundle Thailand travel

BANGKOK Singapore-based Talisman Telecom is joint venturing with two Bangkok-registered media companies, Capital TV and Destination Thailand News Co Ltd, to deliver the first mobile App offering comprehensive travel content on Thailand.

The Destination Thailand App was launched, Tuesday, in Bangkok, at an event attended by the joint venture’s three CEOs; Rane Grady of Capital TV, Stephen Morton of Destination Thailand News and Ananda Rao of Talisman Telecom.

The three CEOs described the project as a new  comprehensive digital and mobile App underwritten by an “ASEAN-based technology consortium to provide the latest information on Thailand for both expats and international tourists”.

Capital TV, registered in 1995 with a capital of THB30 million, has stockpiled over 5,000 hours of video footage of destinations in Thailand and Asia. It produces travel and lifestyle series in English with Thai subtitles for cable TV.

Destination Thailand News, that the CEO claims was registered four years ago in Thailand, provides news about tourism, travel, lifestyle, events and MICE on its website. It claims 87,000 subscribers, worldwide, mostly travel executives.

No launch investment was identified for the joint venture, as each partner contributes content, or in the case of Talisman, the technology to run and maintain the App.

Fielding questions from TTR Weekly, Destination Thailand News CEO and founder, Stephen Morton, said the partners would form a registered joint venture company in Thailand by December or January, to handle the business side of the App venture.

It will also include a fourth partner, APPICO ITS Co Ltd, that owns the Galactio GPS navigation software used by the App.

Asian Trails was contracted exclusively to supply land tours in Thailand, Skyscanner for airline content and HotelCombined for hotel bookings.

According to Morton, travel consumers are the main target even though Destination Thailand’s subscribers are mostly B2B travel planners or executives.

“We will have to invest heavily in search engines such as Google and Bing to reach consumers to use the App,” he said acknowledging that harvesting a critical mass of consumers interested in buying holiday content in Thailand was the main challenge.

According to Morton, the Tourism Authority of Thailand has agreed to promote the App through its offices and website. Thailand Convention and Exhibition has also offered support to reach potential consumers in the events business.

Travel consumers will be able to book and pay for the full gamut of travel content from airline seats to attractions theme parks and tours.

When they use the App to book a service it will connect them directly to the supplier for bookings and payments. The content supplier will then pay a commission to the joint venture company managing the App.

“We are targeting THB5 to THB10 million in revenue over the next two years,” Morton explained. “It will take time to build revenue.”

The company’s main source of revenue will be from commissions from content providers and from advertising.

Each founding partner brings to the table specific content.

Capital TV will supply TV and video content Destination Thailand the news and destination promotions, while Talisman Telecom delivers the software and manages the App.

Both Capital TV and Destination Thailand are familiar entities in Thailand’s closely-knit travel trade community, while Talisman Telecom is relatively unknown.

Its founder and CEO, Ananda Rao, has been involved with technology linked to advertising and mobile applications since 1999.

Rao an Australian citizens was well-known figure in Melbourne’s tech industry circles when he headed Azurn International as its CEO during the company’s successful IPO on the stock market that raised AUD3 million in 2007. It was later delisted in 2009 under a cloud of allegations posted by disgruntled investors.

Since then his name cropped up as CEO of various companies in Australian and India.

His latest venture, Talisman Telecommunications Pte Ltd, based in Singapore, owns outright the subsidiary Call 2 Action Communications Pty Ltd in Bengaluru, India. Talisman Telecommunications Australia Pty Ltd, based in Melbourne, Australia, is also a 100% owned subsidiary of Rao’s Singapore-based company.

According to Rao the Destination Thailand app is delivered under the leadership of Adrish Bera, global COO of Talisman Telecom.

Rao identifies three distinct products that are the backbone of the Destination Thailand App.

The software Talisman Teletango is the core solution and takes the form of a mobile application and is downloaded by the visitor.

According to Rao supporting this front end is a very evolved content delivery system and applications to integrate social media and at its foundation layer a user analytics engine.

Talisman Adimoro allows Destination Thailand to deliver necessary rich media notifications and event-based advertisements. This is the engine that builds a revenue stream.

Talisman PI completes call to action events and interactions between the users and published businesses.

Explaining his role in the venture, Rao said his company “designs, builds and operates the technology ecosystem as a joint venture partner.”

He confirmed Talisman Telecommunications Pte Ltd would be actively involved in setting up a company entity in Thailand in the near future.

On revenue streams, Rao insists the App was designed to be free to travellers.

“Gateways will allow the user to interact with businesses featured and right now there are no plans to ‘sell’; this is an information portal.”

Talisman supplied its first app to Kansai Nerolac Paints and next week is releasing an app in Manila for Manila Times.

That will follow with an App for Sri Shankara Television, next month.

But Rao acknowledges the Destination Thailand App treads new ground for Talisman.

“Destination Thailand is the first ‘connected community mobile application’ Talisman has delivered,” he said. “But we have currently three other ongoing projects in this area of technology.”

Commenting on the launch, Capital TV director, Raine Grady, said: “People want to know what’s new, what’s happening on the food and entertainment scenes, where they can take their children along with tips on art, culture, music and other interesting events that only a real insider can deliver on one complete App instead of having to visit numerous websites.”

Another highlight of the App is the Galactio GPS navigation software. Developed by AAPICO ITS Co ltd this GPS software not only offers how to get to a destination, but also indicates real-time traffic conditions, estimated time of arrival to any destination and major attractions along the route.  The GPS software also has Chinese and Japanese language capabilities apart from English and Thai.

“We are delighted to join the Destination Thailand App as we feel it is the right platform that will help us penetrate into Thailand and, eventually, into ASEAN countries, especially since we have already developed a GPS software for Singapore and Indonesia,” said Yeap Swee Chuan, CEO of AITS.