The Komodo Dragon is awakening to ecommerce; Hot on the heels of Raja Kamar acquiring MG Holidays, KAHA Group, the other hotel distribution player in the market, has also thrown its hat in the ring.

It's entered into a joint venture with former Wotif product director Thailand, Indonesia and Indochina, Yusuf Ijsseldijk, to launch its full-service online B2B and B2C travel sales engine, Goindonesia.com, catering to Indonesian domestic and outbound travellers.

Goindonesia.com (left), which will initially feature hotel and transfer bookings and later airline and package tours, will offer a range of payment options such as Internet banking, closed-amount payments via ATM, and credit card transactions.

Catching up with Scott Blume (right), newly-appointed CEO of Raja Kamar, the day after the KAHA joint venture was announced, I asked the online travel veteran if this signalled the beginning of exciting times for Indonesia. "Yes, it shows the market is waking up and you can be sure we will see a few more plays announced," he said.

Acknowledging that Goindonesia.com will be head-on competition for Raja Kamar, Blume said, "Our differentiator is our deliberate approach to be as comprehensive and deep in content as possible. We have hotels in 135 cities, some of them I didn't even know existed before now, so it's not just Bali and Jakarta.

"And we will have a Bahasa site only, no English for the moment. We want it to make it a pure domestic play for now."

However that does not exclude plans to venture into other markets where Indonesians are frequent travellers. "There are opportunities for some niche partnerships and acquisitions in nearby Asian markets with direct access to content such as Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Vietnam, either through partnerships or equity positions over time."

Its acquisition of MG Holidays gives it a B2B play, to complement Raja Kamar's B2C platform. The former CEO of ZUJI/Travelocity, who's moved to Jakarta in his new role, sees good growth potential for both platforms, predicting a 20% growth for MG Holidays and "because B2C is so new to Indonesia, I wouldn't be surprised to see a 50% year on year growth".

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