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High Tech, High Touch: Finding the Right Balance in Asia
David Liu, Chief Customer Experience Officer, Klook
Tejveer Singh Bedi, VP Commercial, Traveloka
Moderated by Peden Bhutia, Skift
THE ARGUMENT
High touch in Asian travel no longer means a human concierge. Almost no hands went up for that definition in the opening audience poll. Liu and Bedi said what’s more important is giving the customer what they need at the moment they need it, whether that’s through humans or AI — Bedi’s example was rebooking an entire itinerary via natural language on the Traveloka app. Localization is a major component of this strategy, such as adjusting payment strategies for fragmented markets.
THE EVIDENCE
- Liu said high touch used to come from a concierge or customer service agent. Today, it can stem from technology, so long as it gives the customer “what they want at that moment when they need it.”
- Bedi said credit card penetration is under 23% in Thailand and 6% in Indonesia, which is why Traveloka built TPayLater, a Buy Now, Pay Later service.
- Cross-border payments remain a friction point in 2026. Bedi said “there’s huge value in providing easier access to different payment portals.”
- Korean users want long paragraph-style trip descriptions, while Australian users want bullets and tables. This is the per-market UX problem Liu said he would build against with unlimited resources.
THE SO WHAT
If your Asia premium strategy still equates high touch with human concierge, this session argued the customer has largely moved on. The signal that matters now is whether your platform delivers the right answer at the right moment, regardless of who or what delivers it. As Liu said, customers “only care about getting answers.”
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