LagiSatu provides a hotel metasearch service by connecting to local OTAs and travel websites in Asia. While doing so, the company caters primarily to Muslim travellers in South Asia.
The Malaysia-based startup wants to enable Muslim travellers in finding Muslim-friendly hotels - rooms with prayer mat and Quran, hotels that provide list of nearby Mosques, serve halal food etc.
LagiSatu has created its flagship rating by name HalalStars - a rating system that ranks Muslim-friendly amenities at hotels on a scale of 100. This is displayed in addition to the regular hotel rating.
Q&A with co-founder Faeez Fadhlillah:
Tell us how you founded the company, why and what made you decide to jump in and create the business.
We founded LagiSatu with the wish of creating a highly localized hotel metasearch engine, catering to the needs of travellers from Southeast Asia where the majority are Muslims.
We were greatly inspired by some small metasearch engines from Europe, which specifically target a niche market only by offering its content in only one local language, display local OTAs, etc.
We wanted to create a metasearch that is specific to the Southeast Asian market and addressing its needs (which partly can be very different). That was the reason why we started and added HalalStars into Lagisatu, a listing system of amenities and services of hotels for Muslim travellers.
Size of the team, names of founders, management roles and key personnel?
We are a small and lean team of five very dedicated people. The founders of Lagisatu are Faeez Fadhlillah and Juergen Gallistl.
I lead the technology at LagiSatu. Gallistl has been involved in many software and technological projects including suspension design software as well terrain mapping (LIDAR) in his previous years. The handling of Big Data and making it accessible to the end users was always his passion.
Gallistl brings in his wealth of experience in finance and business having been part of an Austrian bank for six years and a marketing agency for another two years, before he left Austria, setting sails to China, Australia and finally Malaysia. His passion lies in the research of correlation between tourism and peace.
Funding arrangements?
The funding of the development as well as the operation since the launch of Lagisatu is coming fully from the founders. This was possible because our financial development was quite good from the start.
Now, we are looking to raise more capital with an investor/partner to grow together.
Estimation of market size?
Our target market at the moment is Malaysia and Southeast Asia, which finds itself in a transitional period between offline bookings towards online booking. The travel market in Malaysia reaches approximately five Billion Ringgit ($1.5 billion) per year, where 24% of it falls to online travel. This number is expected to rise gradually over the next few years and we hope to expand from there.
Competition?
The competition in Malaysia, our home market, is quite big and very heterogeneous. Heavy competition comes from the traditional brick-and-mortar travel agencies. Many customers in Malaysia still want to book offline and pay in cash, although the trend is changing slowly.
Competition on the online market naturally comes from the big established OTAs in this region, with Agoda, Booking.com and Expedia in the forefront. On the meta side, it certainly would be Wego and HotelsCombined.
Revenue model and strategy for profitability?
Our revenue model is based on revenue share agreements with OTA partners. This ensures that our services can be fully free to the end user. The revenue share agreements are currently based on a CPA model.
What problem does the business solve?
With the combination of Lagisatu and HalalStars we want to establish a metasearch specialized on Muslim travellers which constitutes a majority of the population in Malaysia and Southeast Asia at large.
We would like to motivate more Muslims to travel as well as demonstrate to hotels the value of creating more amenities and services for this large group of travellers.
How did the initial idea evolve and were there changes/any pivots along the way in the early stages?
The initial idea of Lagisatu was to make it a localized hotel metasearch. While doing that, we added the HalalStars feature to it.
Our recent experience shows that we have to include more offline elements to Lagisatu.com as well, as that is what customers want.
We will start a dedicated call centre in the near future to complement the online offering. We are thinking about making Lagisatu.com into a hybrid metasearch with an OTA component, as it might be a useful marketing tool, but there is no final decision on that yet.
Why should people or companies use the business?
People should use Lagisatu because it is a free service and it is the only hotel metasearch with a specific feature of Muslim amenities and services.
Additionally, by searching, comparing and booking online, people in Malaysia can save a big portion of their money and maybe have a longer, more luxurious or more frequent holidays.
What is the strategy for raising awareness and the customer/user acquisition (apart from PR)?
We have set aside a comprehensive plan focusing on both online as well as offline marketing. With online, we are looking into the usual four main strategies: SEO and SEM, social media marketing, local blog/forum/site advertising to create brand awareness.
We realized the importance of offline marketing in our home market as a complement to online strategy. This is why we will increase our offline marketing presence beginning next year by marketing through flyer campaigns, radio and billboards.
Where do you see the company in three years time and what specific challenges do you anticipate having to overcome?
We aim to gain a significant market share and a sizeable customer base with wide recognition in our home market Malaysia and hope to have started expansion into Indonesia.
One of our main challenges would be to build trust into our brand, continuously improve and keep up to date with new technology developments, but ultimately, to convince people to move from offline bookings to online bookings.
What is wrong with the travel, tourism and hospitality industry that requires another startup to help it out?
The travel industry is very vast and travellers are, like in any other area, very heterogeneous and can have very different needs. As a small startup company, it is easier for us to target a highly specialized but fast growing market.
What other technology company would you consider yourselves most closely aligned to in terms of culture and style and why?
We would like to align ourselves with Trivago (one can dream, right?) which is a combination of hard work at the same time fun and exciting. We love to analyse Big Data, at the same time, hangout for coffee in the middle of the day for inspiration.
Tnooz view
Muslim travellers' market is growing. According to a study by Dinar Standard, a consultancy that tracks Muslim lifestyle market, and CrescentRating.com, Halal-friendly travel website, it was found that Muslims spent about $126 billion during their travels in 2011. By 2020, this figure is expected to reach $192 billion.
Also, according to the study, the availability of halal food, price and Muslim-friendly experience top the the list of Muslim travellers’ requirements. CrescentRating's 2013 report puts Malaysia (home country of LagiSatu) as the number one destination for halal friendly holiday destination.
LagiSatu is not trying to be everything for everybody, rather, the company is addressing this niche and emerging market of Muslim travellers and their needs.
The HalalStars rating feature for hotels is particularly useful in sorting Muslim-friendly properties.
Travel websites focusing on Muslim travellers have already started to emerge, including sites like Serendipity Travel and Irhal. As we write this TLabs, there is a Middle East-based company (watch out for TLabs soon) that is also set to serve Muslim travellers. However, LagiSatu stands out from all others by being a hotel metasearch.
To beat the competition and be relevant in the marketplace, it is clear that LagiSatu has to offer services beyond HalalStars rating.
Vine video about LagiSatu - click on mute icon to start