Jay: This week’s show guest is Jakapan who is the co-founder and CEO of Tourkrub. Tourkrub is a Thailand-based tourism technology company that helps tour operators in the country bridge the digital divide. With Tourkrub, travelers can search for the best value packages and understand travel industry better. And tour operators can get better marketing tools and management systems at a low cost. Jakapan, welcome to the show.

Far: Yes.

Jay: Please introduce yourself to the audience.

Far: My name is Far, and I’m the CEO of Tourkrub. My background is I’m the programmer and graduate from industrial engineering. I have been doing the travel technology company for five years. And Tourkrub is my latest one, and I have been doing it for two years.

We have seen a lot of problems in the travel industry in Thailand. And we believe that tour and activity segment in Thai still were legacy and very traditional. And we would love to make it to the digital era of touring activities.

Jay: Okay. That’s a good introduction so far. You go by Far, right?

Far: Yeah. My name is Far.

Jay: Were you studying travel and tourism or have any academic background in this? Or was it just something that you decided to jump into and try to become an entrepreneur yourself?

Far: The problem we tackled is, our family — myself — travel by tours a lot. I’m not a fan of individual travelers. So I usually travel by tours, and that’s how we came up with this product to solve this [inaudible] experience problem in this market.

Jay: Okay. I get it. So it was a personal experience with your family that you guys used a lot of tours in the past and you realized that they weren’t as efficient or the current, existing offerings weren’t as up to par as you would have liked. So you say the opportunity there to start a company.

Far: Yes.

Jay: Go it. As far as your background before that, you didn’t really have any background in tourism. Were you just… It’s not easy to just start a company. A lot of people come up with good ideas but to actually say, “I’m going to try to execute this…” It’s not an easy thing. Were your parents pretty supportive of your entrepreneurial dreams?

Far: Oh, yeah. Definitely. It’s really hard.

Jay: Yes, it’s definitely hard. Why don’t you give us a little bit of the landscape of the travel and tourism industry in Thailand. And then you can maybe talk us through what exactly were the pain points that you weren’t happy with that lead you down this path to start Tourkrub.

Far: As you know, Thailand is the tourism country in Southeast Asia. [Inaudible] here. In terms of flight booking and hotel booking, it’s really advanced in Thailand already. But in terms of touring activities in Thailand, it has really lagged behind. This industry is still purchase offline. And the way for the customer to discover the right product takes a long time. And sometimes they get ripped off. As the tour companies, they manage and operate manually. Most of the things are manual. That’s how we saw the opportunities to make it better.

Jay: I see. Interesting. Thailand is a very popular vacation and travel destination globally. I go there almost every year — probably once a year, sometime twice to Phuket or Ko Samui. But are you specifically talking about the domestic travel or catering to Thai nationals?

Far: Yeah, so basically right now, we start off with outbound tour. We bring Thai people to travel abroad first. But later on, we would focus more on domestic and inbound. But as I want to tell you why we started with outbound. Outbound is very systematic already but still traditional. And it’s easier for us to tackle the Thai market, so we advertise to Thai people first. With the benefit of a lot of airplanes flying into Thailand, they need to fly out. When they need to fly out with the empty seats, they sell those seats to operators. And that’s how Thai people can travel abroad so cheap with tours. You have to go with tours. Something like that.

Jay: Okay. So the current… You mentioned it briefly in the introduction. You were saying that currently if you were a Thai national, you want to go take a tour somewhere, how does it normally work? You would have to go to a travel agent, and they would basically have a menu of options of tours that you could do, depending on where you want go — Europe or you want to go somewhere else in Asia or to the US. And then it’s quite fragmented and disconnected though, because you have to have a relationship with a travel agent in order to see the offerings.

Far: Yeah. So right now, before, normally customers used to go to travel expos to see the tour agent, and they usually go on many, many websites, but they look very crappy, cannot find anything. And then they go to the newspaper. And that is not efficient. It takes weeks or months for them to get the product.

Jay: I see. So what is the most popular outbound destination for Thai nationals at the moment?

Far: At the moment, it’s going to be Japan because Thai people don’t need to do a visa to go there. There are a lot of interesting places every season.

Jay: Now walk us through Tourkurb. You obviously have this dated industry within Thailand itself. And you realized that there’s an opportunity for you to disrupt it. And Tourkrub, it’s a technology platform. Is that correct?

Far: Yeah, it’s the tech.

Jay: Walk us through how you started off building it and how were you able to disrupt this industry? Having a technology platform is definitely the way to go right now, but then you have to take into consideration how many people have connectivity. I don’t know what the stats are, but you probably know better than most people. But how many people are actually online? Are people accessing the internet via desktop? Are they going straight from their mobile device? These are all interesting considerations if you want to build a technology company in Thailand.

Far: Okay, right. Most Thai people are already connected because we already have 4G, and it’s really cheap to access if you compare to all of the countries around Southeast Asia. They are connected through mobile devices. They hardly can use the laptop to purchase things.

The Tourkrub has a tag where we can digitize travel itineraries for tour operators within the short term. So the PDF or the paper version of the tour itinerary, we can proceed it into the digital format really fast. And then, when it becomes digital, you can see the pictures of each destination precisely and you can narrow down the result. For example, there are over 200 tours to Japan. And then with the previous method, you had to read through many of them. But with Tourkrub, you can go into our website and use the filters and sorting and select the picture and then the best result that you want to go will come up.

Jay: I see. So it’s essentially a tour database for users to hop online and be able to just very quickly select what country I want to visit, and you can see what tours you have available. And the technology… Does your technology actually summarize the tours in a concise manner so it’s for your users to quickly scroll through?

Far: Yes, yes.

Jay: Talk to us a little about the process in which you were able to connect with these tour operators. How did you come up with these relationships where you could actually access all the tours in Japan, let’s say?

Far: In the beginning, we started small. We went door to door to meet them. After we sold for them a lot, then they were coming to us, wanting us to sell for them. That is how. We started in a very niche market. We started with the premium one, and we tried to dominate it first.

Jay: Okay. You said you’ve only been doing Tourkrub for two years. Right?

Far: Yes.

Jay: So basically, you started off with premium travel tour agencies or tour guide packages, and then you connected with them, and now it’s kind of grown. Now you have different types of offers. You have premium, and then you probably have lower-priced options. Does it vary by number of days and experiences and this sort of thing?

Far: Actually, we’re still only focusing on full-bought tour where a customer can get everything included from the flight, hotel, the restaurant, and the bars.

Jay: I see. That’s quite interesting. Obviously, there must be language support as well. A Thai tour guide or someone that can speak Thai. Right?

Far: Yes, yes. This kind of tour is very traditional.

Jay: I guess I’m just curious because it’s been a while since I personally have gone on tours, and I think if I were going to a country where I couldn’t speak the language, then I think it would be much more helpful the me to hop on a tour. But for the most part, I’ve just done my internet research or you ask friends for recommendations of hotels and restaurants and that sort of thing. So I’m not that familiar with the tourism industry. But it seems like it’s potentially a pretty big market because, I guess, the demographic and macro view of Thailand is that, as the middle-class wealth increases, they’re going to want to travel a lot more.

Far: Behavior of Asian people are different than Western. Most of us have big families, and they live together. So we’re probably more than two people is getting more complicated to book all the accommodations. And they usually have the parents at home too. So the tours is really easy to buy because their parents don’t need to walk into the train or those kinds of things.

Jay: So you said that Japan is your most popular destination. How long do they go for normally? Is it a week? Is that the standard that people will take a tour for?

Far: Like five days.

Jay: Okay. Why don’t you walk us through Tourkrub’s revenue model? How do you guys make money on the platform?

Far: The tour operators send us the package, and they update with us. Some of them are real time. We connect the backend of their inventory to us. And some operators send us the Excel sheets to update all the prices. The way we monetize that… Once the customer pays us, we deduct a commission and send the rest of the money to the tour operators.

Jay: So you just basically collect a commission off of every sale you make.

Far: Yes, a commission.

Jay: And do the tour operators… Is there any fee to list on your platform, or that just gets taken off if someone actually purchases a tour?

Far: It is for free to list it on our website, but we also have the QC method to list them on. And there is only a commission-based revenue model right now.

Jay: I looked at your site earlier, but it was all in Thai. I guess it’s definitely geared toward the Thai nationals. Is there a social aspect of it, as in rating tours and starring and that sort of thing?

Far: You mean review and rating?

Jay: Yeah.

Far: It’s really tricky, a little bit. But we didn’t do it for customers yet. But we do get feedback after each of our customers come back. And if any tour is not good, we don’t list it on our website.

Jay: Okay. So you actually have full-discretion on the tour. If you get bad feedback, then you just take it off the site, basically.

Far: Yes, exactly. Because right now, we still run or operate in the retail model. It isn’t open as a platform yet. So a customer will mostly think we are the one who operated the tour.

Jay: This is interesting. The travelers satisfaction and rating is quite important, especially as you look to scale. There are certain liability issues. Like what if you book a tour on the platform and then something happens on the tour or maybe the tour never happens. I don’t know. All these liability issues. How do you protect yourself against those sorts of accidents?

Far: We have damage coverage — letters between us and tour operators. Before they list it on our website, we have an agreement — which kind of damage they have to take risks.

Jay: I see. So are you eventually going to add that social element, do you think? Or are you going to stick to the model that you have currently?

Far: After we’ve been back from Alibaba camp, I have seen the Chinese world where they have a platform model. So I think after we reach certain of our customers, we will open it as a platform and that’s where the social rating is come.

Right now, we try to view all the tools that help, everyone can sell first. When the tools are very strong, we will open it up for everyone. And we’re not a retail model anymore.

Jay: That makes sense. Actually you kind of helped transition into the Alibaba eFellows Program. I’m just curious about your experience there. Are there any key takeaways or lessons that you learned that might be helpful for the audience to hear?

Far: For the experience in Hangzhou, I was really impressed with how Alibaba can grow really big. The key takeaways is that they have a unique culture where they’re focusing on culture, really good, to grow in China. So they use Eastern wisdom combined with Western management.

Personally, I found out the region of the founder is also really important. For example, Alibaba has a vision that aligns with the country roadmap, like so the manufacturer can ship out across their country to sell anywhere in the world. And with the culture and vision like that, it’s become really emotional for people within the country. And that’s how they can attract talent easily. And they can get the support easily too.

Other than that, I was also really impressed about inclusive development. Inclusive development is you’re don’t only try to squeeze all the money out of the supply chain, but you let everyone have a participation on that road. For example, they have Taobao, and Taobao can access so many customers around China. And they go to the rural areas in China — some village — and they help them and teach them how to sell their agricultural product in Taoboa. And with the logistic company, the ecosystem, they’re really efficient. They ship the walnut, the agricultural product, from the village to around cities in China. And the people in the rural areas can make money, so they don’t need to come into the city to find jobs. You see? This is really amazing.

Jay: Yeah, I think Alibaba, they’re definitely aligned with the country’s vision. I’ve heard a lot about their culture and how they cultivate this teamwork mentality because people are proud to work for Alibaba, and they want to work. So recruiting is, obviously, not an issue. I’m just fascinated with the company and what they’ve done.

On that note, for you personally and your company, Tourkrub, what are you guys looking to achieve in the next year or maybe couple of years? What are your views on the travel and tourism industry in Thailand? Do you see any trends that are shaping or forming over the next several years?

Far: Yeah. I think after I’m back from this camp, I do believe tours can be more mainstream and tour operators can operate it in terms of more creative with the software tools that we have. So right now, we can predict the customer behavior who land on our site. And we also have the block that people come to participate. And we work closely with operators to provide more long-tail experiences. Like they have a lot of accommodations that they already deposit money into. But the tour right now is still boring. But with the data that we collect from the customer, we can know exactly what type of experience — more exciting experiences — that customers want. So we can provide something more exotic or more interesting to them.

Jay: Yeah. This is actually a trend that I’m seeing as well. When I look around Hong Kong — just Hong Kong — even for just local residents, there are these experience packages that you can buy. If you want to go cook or go painting or stuff like this. And this is all offered on the internet. You can go buy these things for an hour or two hours and that sort of thing. So I think that there’s going to be a marriage of these sorts of experiences and you combine it with a tour. Let’s say I’m in Thailand, and there’s some local, cultural experience that I could experience, I would definitely add that onto my package. Right?

Far: Exactly. And right now, to operators in Thailand, they’re not really creative on that kind of thing because they still don’t have the data to confirm the demand.

Jay: Absolutely. What about Tourkrub specifically? What are your goals for 2018 and beyond?

Far: Right now on Tourkrub, we are focusing on reaching 10% of the market. After that point, we believe we can have all the SaaS an operator needs. Once we reach that point, we’ll open as a platform. We won’t be retail anymore. So we will help all the tour operators sell more and get more exciting tour packages for Thai or others.

Jay: I think those are very attainable goals that you’re setting for yourself. I think Thailand also has a good relationship with tourism and travel. I understand that you’re primarily catering right now to Thai nationals, but whenever someone says “Thailand,” the first thing that people think of is holiday, vacations. It kind of goes hand-in-hand with the country as well, the country’s vision.

Far, thanks so much for coming on the show and talking to us about Tourkrub. We’re looking forward to tracking your progress. What’s the best place that people can find you or follow you and perhaps learn more about Tourkrub? I know that your website is just the local language, but are you on social media at all if people want to reach out?

Far: I’m on Facebook, Jakapan Leeathiwat. I’ll send you the link.

Jay: Yeah. We’ll get it linked up in the show notes. Thanks for coming on again. Best of luck. We’re looking forward to hearing more about Tourkrub’s success.

Far: Thank you very much.

Jay: Alright. Take care.

Far: Take care, Jay.