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A month after its launch in Hong Kong, Hutchison-Priceline yesterday unveiled its online travel services in Singapore.

Cheung Kong (Holdings) is a majority shareholder in the joint venture between Hutchison Whampoa and Priceline of the United States.

The service launched in the last week of March after a year's delay as the company debated consumer readiness.

The Hong Kong service of Hutchison-Priceline has been a success, according to chief executive Alfredo Gangotena.

'Hundreds of travellers have bought from Priceline in Hong Kong and the feedback has been very positive. This has encouraged us to move ahead into Singapore,' he said.

At last month's launch, Mr Gangotena said that in the first phase of its roll-out, Hutchison-Priceline would launch sites in Singapore and Taiwan after Hong Kong.

He described Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan as the most ready in terms of traveller and Internet savvy.

He said Singapore was the ideal place to launch Priceline's unique name-your-price Web service as government statistics showed people in the city-state were among Asia's most prolific travellers, with overseas travel growing an average 11 per cent per year for the past decade. Over the same period, the population grew just 2 per cent per year.

According to Nielsen//NetRatings, Singapore trails behind only South Korea in terms of time spent on the Internet, with 2.3 million Singaporeans visiting the Net regularly and 60 per cent of households accessing the Internet from home.

The unique nature of its name-your-price model meant Hutchison-Priceline had started an awareness campaign to educate the market in Hong Kong in the past month. The million-dollar campaign included television and print advertising as well as interactive stands at Watsons and ParknShop, encouraging customers to enter informed bids instead of unrealistically low fares.

A realistic bid was 20 per cent to 30 per cent below typical rates, Hutchison-Priceline staff said.

However, cheaper fares and hotel rates come with some limitations. Customers do not know which airline or hotel they will get and once a bid is accepted, customers have to commit to the transaction.

Most discounted airline tickets would not allow customers to claim for mileage points and there was no flexibility in changing flight times and dates once the bid had been accepted.



Singaporeans asked to name price