More than a week ago, two major airlines disappeared from Traveloka. They’re still missing.

Where are have all the tickets gone? Photo credit: ken H.

About a week ago, Traveloka customers noticed that tickets for two major Indonesian airlines were no longer available through the site.

Twitter user @ridwansyarif_ab noticed on the afternoon of October 12 that something was amiss.

Traveloka aggregates tickets from multiple airlines in the region, including those of Indonesian state airline Garuda and its subsidiary Citilink. It also offers online hotel booking and tour packages. Apart from those two airlines no longer showing up in search results, everything else appears to be working fine.

When Tech in Asia reached out to Traveloka after the first customer complaints surfaced, we were assured it was a temporary glitch. The issue would be resolved soon.

We checked back a few days later and got the same answer.

“Our team is already working so hard to recover the problem […] We don’t want our customers [to] be misled to think that we don’t offer Garuda anymore despite it being temporary glitch,” Traveloka co-founder and CEO Ferry Unardi told us at the end of last week.

A business feud?

The “temporary glitch” persists until now.

Sources in the industry say the reason for the missing tickets is a clash between Traveloka and Garuda.

According to this explanation, the state carrier froze the partnership after the online travel agent ran its Traveloka Online Travel Fair promotion earlier this month – right when Garuda also held a travel fair.

Traveloka’s promotion might have negatively affected Garuda’s own ticket sales, leading to the decision to boycott Traveloka, at least temporarily.

However, Garuda spokesperson Benny S. Butarbutar denies that clashing promotional activities have anything to do with it. “We serve two separate markets,” he told Tech in Asia a few days ago.

He offered no other explanation, but affirmed that it’s not a technical issue on the airline’s side. “There is no problem with our system, you can ask other travel agents.”

Indeed, online travel agents like Tiket still offer Garuda and Citilink flights.

Backed by Rocket Internet’s Global Founders Capital and other investors, Traveloka is one of the biggest online travel portals in the region, and certainly the biggest one in Indonesia.

Its total valuation and investment is unknown, but the company could be worth north of US$1 billion.

The startup also became known last year as the local ecommerce player with the fastest growing advertising expenses.

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from Tech in Asia https://www.techinasia.com/traveloka-drops-garuda-citilink
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