Airlines 'should apply online system'
Anissa S. Febrina, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta
In an era where a country's development is increasingly measured by its bandwidth per capita, real-time connectivity is what consumers now demand.
"I am a middle-class business traveler, without the privilege of a secretary to take care of my air tickets," said 28-year-old Ahmad Bardi, a processed-food exporter with a small manufacturing plant in Depok, some 20 kilometers south of Jakarta.
At present, he has to take care of all the mundane details of his travel across the region to expand his market, which also means booking airplane seats.
"OK, there are by-phone ticket reservations, but I think we have to move beyond that in this 'dot-com' era," he said. "It would be very pleasant if we can book tickets with a single click on our laptops."
In the Asia-Pacific region, airline tickets are among the top four items purchased by Internet shoppers. Some 25 percent of more than 7,000 people with Internet access surveyed by market research firm AC Nielsen said that they have bought airline tickets online at least once.
"It is a common service provided by most airlines in the region," said AC Nielsen researcher Catherine Eddy.
While frequent flyers in Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore -- as well as all the developed countries -- can enjoy real-time connectivity, Bardi and other local flyers will have to wait a little longer.
"Even the country's largest airline company, Garuda Indonesia, does not have such a system," Catherine lamented.
The same survey, with 500 Indonesian respondents, revealed that only 15 percent of local online shoppers had purchased tickets via the Internet.
Currently, Indonesia has a very low information and communication technology (ICT) penetration ratio -- 2 percent -- meaning that only 4.4 million of some 220 million Indonesians use the Internet.
As of September, only two Indonesian airlines -- Merpati and Awair -- integrate online ticket reservation systems into their business.
Two other airlines that operate here, AdamAir and Air Paradise, have announced that they would provide online flight booking but have not begun the system.
"Airlines have to realize that sooner or later they will have to provide online reservation services for the convenience of their frequent flyers, especially if they want to compete regionally," Catherine asserted.
According to the National Research Institute's information technology department, setting up e-commerce would benefit companies as they could increase revenue.
The system would also provide efficiency through real-time electronic transfer payments, as well as reduce paperwork.
"For airlines, online reservation systems work to their full benefit as customers have paid ahead of time while the airlines themselves have less tickets to issue," added Catherine.