Trust-Gaining Strategy for the Umrah Marketplace

Many industries have not been fully touched by technology, one of which is Umrah. He is blue ocean which has huge potential because it treats all Muslims as target consumers. Every year Indonesia sends approximately 1 million Umrah pilgrims. As of April 2019, it is said that it has reached 849 thousand worshipers.

This figure is large compared to neighboring countries, but if you look at the number of Muslim population in Indonesia, it is not comparable. This means that there is still a market share that has not been touched by Umrah tour service players. This potential can be utilized by technology players, one of which is Going Umrah.

Co-Founder & CEO Go Umrah M. Faried Ismunandar was present to fill the session #TuesdayStartup first week edition of October 2019. Here he tells a lot about the initial journey of GoUmroh to attract umrah tour providers and how to convince them to join.

Partner selection

There are still 1000 providers umrah tour circulating in Indonesia. That's officially licensed, not counting those who don't have a license. Faried predicts the number is more than 3 thousand. So, do all these tour providers have to be invited by GoUmroh? The answer is not necessarily.

Faried actually prefers partner selection. The reason is that many partners have SLA standards (Service Level Agreement) under the needs of consumers GoUmroh.

Previously, these SLAs were not their main focus because they had been playing offline. This kind of SLA can certainly benefit consumers and the players themselves. Therefore, to be able to join there are several requirements that they must meet.

"For example, we encourage them to be officially licensed, have a clean business record and have never been in default."

As of now, GoUmrah has captured 32 Umrah tour players and provided more than 400 types of products. The plan is to increase the number to 50 players next year, targeting new cities.

Give various added values

Faried explained that over the years, Umrah tour players have been able to attend because they rely on offline agents to market their products. They feel they are safe with it, even though there are growing e-commerce platforms out there which will gradually reduce their business without realizing it, if they don't participate.

Actually, they are aware of that, but the conditions on the ground are very different. Either because it is hindered by the costs that must be incurred to create an e-commerce site or just don't want to jump into it yet.

The approach taken by WargaUmroh in providing added value for them is to release features that can ease the work of the umrah jour service that is administrative in nature and simplify the payment system.

This feature was born because most of the umrah travel is tight competition, but resource they are limited. Take for example, to send hundreds of people in a year, there are only five to six people.

"There are several jobs that we can do to make it easier for them, such as payment and administration. The goal is that they can focus on their main job, serving departures until they return to the country," he said.

Attracting Umrah tour players in the early stages is very challenging. When Going Umrah was inaugurated, his party had collaborated with eight officially licensed Umrah service players out of a total of 1000 players in Indonesia.

In addition, going for Umrah also provides insight make partners about conditions in the industry. What are the products that consumers are looking for at that time, how is the price competition, and insight others that they can use to innovate. Insight like this cannot be obtained when selling offline.

"The end is about business, so we'll expand channeling with other partners and cooperate with tour players to open other business opportunities. This is quite appreciated by joining GoUmroh, there are benefits from the commercial side and help the business."

Maintain the loyalty of partners and consumers

After having a network of tour providers, the next challenge is to maintain their loyalty because in the end this will be very important. The GoUmroh team prepares the team account management which are more numerous than the other divisions.

The next task is to do a lot of activity on the demand side by producing more content soft selling. It should be realized, Umrah is not an impulsive activity. It takes a lot of consideration for everyone because considering the cost is not cheap, it's different with e-commerce sites.

"Umrah has become a necessity for people, but the communication method must be in a casual way according to the target market. Our focus is now there in the form of content and share on social media."

Faried admits that 90% of service buyers at GoUmroh are those who are for the first time on Umrah. From their habits, consumers rarely go directly to choose which service suits their needs. It must have taken a few times.

In order to keep consumers coming back to Umrah, the team provides a three product comparison feature to make it easier for them before deciding which package to choose.

The smallest thing that GoUmroh also provides for partners is to change the currency exchange rate from dollars to Rupiah. This is useful to keep attracting consumer loyalty by offering a stable selling price. Unlike the case with a volatile dollar.