ZUJI is a leading online travel company in Asia Pacific owned by Travelocity, an international leader in online travel. Travelocity is owned by Sabre Holdings Corporation. Through its online travel website accessible throughout Asia Pacific, ZUJI allows travelers to buy travel products online, such as air tickets, holiday packages and cruises, and to make hotel reservations, arrange car rentals, and book attractions. Travel products on ZUJI can be searched, booked, and paid for online with the company’s guarantee of 24 hours a day, 7 days a week availability and full electronic security.
To do so, ZUJI accesses reservation systems to deliver a comprehensive range of travel products from more than 400 airlines, 60,000 hotels, 50 car hire companies, and more than 3,000 activities and attractions. ZUJI is a one-stop shop for travelers who are looking for the control and convenience of booking travel online.
The company has been operating since 2003, and it now has close to one million members. ZUJI understands the importance of meeting the needs of local consumers in its regional markets. As a result, it has seven country-specific sites- Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. On these sites, it produces country specific, highly customized content and language options.
ZUJI realizes that it is not just the ability to book tickets easily that keeps customers coming back. To increase the ‘stickiness’ of its travel gateway, the company strives to create compelling content to repeatedly drive regular traffic back to the site. For example, it caters to members in each market, including the distribution of a ZUJI e-newsletter that offers the latest travel deals.
For the price sensitive traveler, the site also features a ‘Price Guru’ travel tool that tracks the lowest return airfares for up to five chosen destinations for each ZUJI member, and alerts them to deals via email (or SMS in some markets) when airfare prices drop. ZUJI offers other useful travel-related content too, such as destination information, a currency converter, global weather forecasts, and information about visa requirements, flight schedules and insurance.
To stay ahead of the competition, ZUJI focuses on developing new and innovative content. It recently added hotel reviews to the site, so that people can research accommodation options before making a reservation, without having to leave site.
ZUJI knows the importance of being open for business round-the-clock. Each of its sites has to be available on-demand so that customers can place orders anytime, at the click of a mouse. In addition, ZUJI understands the importance of customer service; its customer care team is accessible seven days a week via webchat, email, phone or fax.
ZUJI is a joint venture of 15 leading airlines operating in Asia Pacific, and Travelocity, a leading US based online travel company. The company’s 15 joint partners are All Nippon Airways, Cathay Pacific Airways, China Airlines, EVA Airways, Garuda Indonesia, Hong Kong Dragon Airlines, Japan Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, SilkAir, Singapore Airlines and United Airlines.
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Objective
ZUJI, Asia-Pacific’s most comprehensive online travel company, puts the world of travel at your fingertips. ZUJI is your partner, whether you seek a well-trodden path or the road less travelled; a popular tourist spot or an unusual destination. ZUJI makes travel easy with their network of global partners. ZUJI aims to make your trip truly unique.
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Features
a) Business Model:
The business model of www.zuji.com.sg is a business to consumer(B2C) type of business as ZUJI is an online travel agency offering travel services to consumers. ZUJI also has a backbend B2B infrastructure since it linked to UOB for some promotions which will be elaborated under strengths below.
b) Characteristics:ZUJI offers their customers a wide array of travel services to make planning a trip easier such as:
1) Red Hot Deals
Offers great travel deals that make travelling even more rewarding and saves cost.
2) e-Newsletter
Members can get the latest travel deals before anyone else with their member newsletter. They alert their members of travel deals before they advertise them to the public.
3) Price Guru
Tracks the lowest return airfares for up to five chosen destinations and alerts their customers via e-mail when it hits or betters the amount specified by the customers.
4) Flight Guru
Provides a host of search options for flights, including alerting their customers of free stopovers. Customers can even pre-select their seats on selected flights.
5) Travel Tools
Everything to help their customers prepare for their trip such as useful destination information, a currency converter, global weather forecasts, visa requirements, flight schedules, insurance and more.
6) Flexible Payment Options
Pay online through credit cards, or call their Customer Service Centre and provide credit card details. Alternatively, customers can pay in person at the ZUJI ticketing office.
7) Secure Online Payment
Online payment at ZUJI is secured by VeriSign, the global leader in online security for e-commerce payments.
8) Free Ticket Delivery
Making travel arrangements with ZUJI doesn't require any unnecessary travelling - they'll deliver the tickets to their customers at a local address, absolutely free. (They charge a small fee for an overseas courier.)
9) Customer Care
They are accessible 7 days a week via email, phone or fax if customers have any queries with their online booking.
c) Designs:
1) Logo :
Starting from the new logo of ZUJI, it highlights that it is a Travelocity company, and introduces hand-drawn stars, symbolising unique, aspirational travel: the essence of ZUJI’s business. The logo features three multi-coloured stars representing ZUJI’s many product offerings and business relationships. The stars symbolise travel, as inspired by the earliest travellers who looked to the stars as a guide towards new discoveries and destinations. ZUJI’s stars are representative of the travel guidance ZUJI offers. The hand drawn effect represents how travellers create their own unique journeys online on ZUJI.
2) Lay-out:
The lay-out of the website is generally user-friendly as it is neatly arranged. This makes it easier for the customers to navigate through the website via links.
ZUJI launched new 'hotel guru' enhancements that will make it easier for customers to shop for hotels. The new functionality includes the ability to select up to four hotels and compare them side by side based on a range of attributes -- location, star rating, photos, amenities and price. ZUJI has also introduced tools that make it easier for customers to refine their search by price range, star rating, location or hotel name. These new features, in addition to ZUJI’s existing traveller reviews and mapping functionality will allow travellers to easily find a hotel that best suits their needs. It also allows hoteliers a new way to feature their hotels to ZUJI‘s audience of travellers.
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Analysis
a) Strength:
ZUJI offers very very low airline tickets with extraordinary special offers from time to time. This allows more people to travel at lower costs and save a lot of money. It is also a one stop shopping as you can buy airline tickets, travel insurance and book hotels all at one go. This allow travellers the freedom to control the search and booking process, make access and booking travel convenient, ie 24 hours a day, seven days a week, offer competitive pricing across a wide range of travel choices, and allow immediate confirmation and secure payment online making holiday planning so much more convenient. You can also book tours from ZUJI.
ZUJI also offers airline ticket packages. They have packages that either has 4 people traveling together or family packages where 2 adults and 2 children can travel together. For hotels, customers can pay less for your children as children normally share rooms with their parents.
More consumers realise the benefits of logging-on to book their travel. More local and global companies are seeking to reap the financial potential of the growing industry, but few have the scale or established trust of ZUJI, which has been operating for many years in Asia Pacific. ZUJI has an impressive track record of working with a wide range of travel suppliers in the region to distribute product to a growing traveler base of more than one million members.
In addition to access to a comprehensive range of airfares, hotels, packages and other travel products, ZUJI has worked closely with many suppliers to offer compelling tactical deals supported by innovative, fast to market, marketing campaigns. The award reflects the success of these innovative supplier relationships, including relationships with many of the hotels participating in the innovative Travelocity Net Rate Hotel Program.
Travellers can visit ZUJI sites to find, choose and securely make reservations and payment instantly online with up to 72,000 local and international hotels, 400 local and international airlines, 4,000 world wide attractions as well as packaged tours, cruises, car hire and travel insurance.
Each of ZUJI’s sites is unique, and managed by an in-country team of people. ZUJI offers great value travel deals as negotiated locally, regionally and internationally through the Travelocity network of companies. ZUJI allows instant confirmation of bookings, with e-reservations, e-ticketing and e-payment options. ZUJI is verisign secured and have consumer trust. Hence, travellers get a sense that they can trust ZUJI.
ZUJI is linked up with UOB Bank. Those using UOB VISA Signature Card are privilege to get even greater deals from ZUJI. As for other UOB cards, you can use your reward points (UNI$) to exchange for vouchers from ZUJI.
b) Potential:
ZUJI was voted ‘Asia Pacific’s Best Online Travel Agent’ in 2005 and 2006, as awarded by TTG travel magazine, and Asia’s ‘Best Online Travel Agent’ in 2007 as recognised by the TravelWeekly Asia Industry Awards.
ZUJI’s potential can also be seen by its recent success in entering into a distribution agreement with Hong Kong Disneyland to market the resort’s hotel rooms online via ZUJI websites in Asia Pacific. ZUJI customers can now check the price and availability of the hotel rooms in real time, and get instant confirmation of Hong Kong Disneyland resort hotel bookings on ZUJI sites in: Australia (www.zuji.com.au), Singapore (www.zuji.com.sg), Hong Kong (www.zuji.com.hk), Korea (www.nextour.co.kr), India (www.travelocity.co.in), Taiwan (www.zuji.com.tw) and New Zealand (www.zuji.co.nz). The hotels can also be booked on other Travelocity-owned sites globally, including via lastminute.com in the United Kingdom.
c) Weaknesses:Sensitive information like credit card details and passport information are sent via the internet. No matter what security policy ZUJI has, there is still a risk involved in divulging such sensitive information over the internet especially so when the information has to be given before confirmation on the hotel booking can be given. The information may be misused without the knowledge of the consumer.
There is also no guarantee that the consumers will get what they are paying for until they reach the destination.
As they offer cheap airline tickets, most of the flights will be the less popular timings like the "red-eyed" midnight flight. There are also usually long transits between flights to destinations such as the United States of America as they try to reduce the cost to consumers by putting them on 2 cheap airlines. This removes the convenience and savings of booking online.
The status of the hotel (whether the hotel is fully booked or still has rooms available) that the consumer is interested in is not stated. The agents can only check once details are provided and a deposit made. If the hotel is not available, the consumer has to go through the hassle of looking for another hotel and making another booking. Even if ZUJI provides alternatives, the consumer has to fill in another request form formally asking them to check on the status of the hotel.
ZUJI also does not offer backpackers hostels which is a disadvantage to budget travellers especially students and young couples on a tight budget. ZUJI also only offers hotels and not small inns like ryokans in Japan for travellers who want a different experience especially the yuppies and honeymooners.
Even though ZUJI is an e-commerce travel agency, they still rely on staff to do the actual bookings. So requests are still subject to the working hours of the staff. This is no different from booking with a regular travel agency.
d) Enhancement:
Recent trends show that a growing number of travellers are budget conscious travellers such as students. People are also more price sensitive nowadays. This is evident in the growth of the budget airline industry. ZUJI may want to consider tapping into the market of budget travellers by having links to budget airlines like Tiger Airways, Jetstar Asia, AirAsia, RyanAir. They may also consider having links with budget tour groups like Busabout.com and Haggis Adventures to name a few.
Train travel is also fast becoming a popular choice especially when travelling through Europe. Thus, ZUJI should consider having a tie-up with Eurail Group, the company that sells the Eurail pass the pass that allows travel throughout Europe by train.
ZUJI currently only has promotions by VISA. They may want to expand this to other credit cards like MasterCard and American Express.
