MANILA, Philippines – travelmob (www.travelmob.com), a leading social stay marketplace where property owners in Asia Pacific can list unique spaces to visiting travellers for short-term stays, announced its official launch today. With the launch of travelmob, travellers will now have the opportunity to find quality accommodation at affordable rates.
Founded jointly by Turochas Fuad (“T”), ex Managing Director of Skype Asia Pacific and Prashant Kirtane (”PK”), formerly Senior Director of Engineering at Yahoo! Inc, the company was started with a vision to enable travellers around the world to experience Asia Pacific like a local.
Turochas, CEO and Co-Founder of travelmob stated, “travelmob is uniquely focused on growing Asia Pacific as a destination for global travellers. We aim to be the leading marketplace offering social stays and unique experiences in the region, and are committed in offering a localized experience for our users.”
Globally, Asia Pacific is one of the fastest growing regions for tourism. According to the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), international arrivals into the region grew by 10% year-on-year in March 2012, led by Southeast Asia, which saw a strong 15% increase in visitor numbers compared to March 2011.
Besides the vast cultural diversity in Asia Pacific, which makes it an interesting destination, the hike in the region’s inbound travel can also be attributed to rising incomes among the middle classes in China, India and Southeast Asia. China is producing 25 million new people classified as ‘middle class’ each year, and Indonesia will soon reach 60 million of its population deemed to be middle class.
travelmob provides a secure platform for property owners in Asia Pacific to list their spare room, entire apartment or vacation villa for short term stays. The site facilitates the entire booking process by providing a safe messaging platform for Guests (travellers) and Hosts (property owners) to contact each other and handles the financial transaction between both parties to ensure secure, timely payments.
Hosts can list as many properties as they like for free on travelmob and a service fee is collected only when an actual booking is made. According to Turochas, “Renting out your spare room or apartment to foreign guests visiting the country is a great way to help boost local tourism and meet new people from all around the world. travelmob provides another avenue for homeowners to monetize their properties to earn extra cash.”
Similarly, travelmob provides Guests with a safe payment system and holds payments for 24hrs after the Guest has checked in, to ensure a smooth and satisfactory experience.
Understanding that travelers generally trust recommendations from friends and other travelers, travelmob has also built a transparent review system where Guests and Hosts can share their feedback on one another for a recent stay. In addition, the site integrates with popular social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, allowing users to share their travelmob experiences with their network and view which of their friends are fans of travelmob too.
True to its dedicated focus in Asia Pacific, travelmob has also introduced a couple of unique features for its users:
- Localized payment options: support for 13 global currencies, 10 of which are key Asian currencies.
- Localized language support in 5 Asian languages: Bahasa Indonesia, Vietnamese, Thai and Traditional and Simplified Chinese.
- Local customer care in selected languages such as Chinese, Malay and Bahasa Indonesia.
- Create Discount feature for Hosts to offer special discounts during off peak season and conduct special promotions for Guests.
Prashant, CTO and Co-Founder of travelmob said, “This is just the start. We intend to continuously gather feedback from our community and will introduce innovative,localized features in the near future.”
With listings across Asia Pacific, travellers will be spoilt for choice on travelmob. Great steals include:
- A cosy 2-bedroom apartment, perfect for business travellers, in Central Hong Kong at US$150 per night
- A romantic getaway in a traditional Balinese villa at US$250/night
- A luxurious family pool villa in Koh Samui, Thailand at only US$295/night
To celebrate its launch, travelmob is giving US$50 in credit to all of its users to be utilized for bookings made in the next 30 days, valid till 9 August 2012. Customers can visit travelmob.com/launch for more details.
You can also find more information on travelmob at www.travelmob.com.