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Called Travel Exchange Indonesia (TXI), the portal will provide end-to-end tourism and travel products and services

The Indonesia government through its Ministry of Tourism announced that it is set to launch Travel Exchange Indonesia (TXI), an online marketplace for travel and tourism services, in October.

According to a report by Bisnis Indonesia, the platform will connect potential customers with online travel agencies (OTAs) and conventional travel agencies to purchase services and products such as airline tickets, hotel bookings, car rentals, and tour packages, to name the few.

The goal of the platform is to digitalise conventional travel agencies, which many are run by small and medium enterprises (SMEs), in order to empower them to compete in the digital era.

Also Read: Malaysian travel platform Packist announces plan to expand locally and internationally

In order to achieve this, the Ministry stated that it has secured partnerships with travel tech startups such as Traveloka, Alitrip, and C-Trip; search engine companies such as Google and Baidu; and travel review platform Tripadvisor.

The end goal of the initiative is to promote Indonesia’s travel and tourism industry to its core target markets, which consists of Singapore, China, Malaysia, Australia, Japan, and Korea.

“Sales will be conducted by the travel agents themselves. The government will do the promotion through Tripadvisor, with the promotional materials being uploaded to it,” according to Minister of Tourism Arief Yahya.

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This is not the first time the Indonesian government announced initiatives to support SMEs by building an online marketplace to sell their services and products to the international audience. However, TXI will be the first that focusses solely on travel and tourism industry.

The Indonesia government also has Inamall, the result of its partnership with e-commerce giant Alibaba. The involvement of Alitrip in the initiative indicates a stronger involvement of the company in the government’s big agenda for e-commerce industry.

Recently, Minister of Communications and Informatics Rudiantara announced that he has proposed Alibaba Founder and Chairman Jack Ma as advisor to the e-commerce steering committee.

Indonesia also has an online marketplace especially for products made by state-owned enterprises.

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Image Credit: 123RF

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