By Digital News Asia           November 25, 2022
Estimated more than 35 mil digital nomads globally, boost to local economy
Operators must meet four key criteria to become accredited under De Rantau
Malaysian traveltech startup, Tourplus Technology Sdn Bhd has announced its partnership with Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) to provide accreditation status to accommodation operators under the De Rantau programme. The accreditation will certify and recognise remote-work-friendly accommodations and boost their level of preparedness for an influx of remote workers in De Rantau Hubs located in Kuala Lumpur, Langkawi and Penang in the coming years. According to Forbes, there are more than 35 million digital nomads globally who are projected to contribute a global economic value of US$787 billion annually. The De Rantau programme hopes to tap this lucrative market to boost the growth of Malaysia’s digital economy. Properties of accredited accommodation operators will be featured on the Tourplus platform for digital nomads to select options that will enable them to network with like-minded individuals and immerse themselves in new cultures and experiences. To become accredited, accommodation operators must fulfil the following criteria and possess the necessary facilities including:
Lodging: Bed, bathroom, workspace with desk and chair, cashless payment options, security, kitchen or pantry;
Internet: Free wifi with a minimum of 100 MBPS, 4G/LTE and a minimum of 8 MBps for fixed broadband;
Vibrancy of community and livelihood: Accessible cafés and restaurants, convenience stores, entertainment spots, transportation, and digital platform services; and
Engagement: Educational programmes, cultural experiences, recreational activities and gatherings. Accommodation operators who do not meet the accreditation criteria will be able to apply for a facility upgrading grant of up to RM10,000 from MDEC to assist with expenses for adaptations, repairs and refurbishment to their premises, enabling them to secure accreditation and be better equipped to meet the requirements of digital nomads. CEO & founder of Tourplus, Rickson Goh said: “We are excited to be partnering with MDEC in supporting Malaysia’s ambitions to become the preferred digital nomad hub in ASEAN. With the rise of remote working globally coupled with Malaysia’s beautiful locations, we have an immense opportunity to attract foreign talent to our shores.”
The accreditation and grant are open to all accommodation providers from 1-star to 5-star hotels and resorts, homestays and Airbnb homes within the De Rantau Hubs vicinity. “Accommodation operators will experience increased bookings and simultaneously a sales boost for nearby businesses such as restaurants and marts,” Goh added. Tourplus has also been appointed as a De Rantau ecosystem partner to create thriving De Rantau Hubs across Malaysia by facilitating the growth of neighbouring restaurants, laundromats, spa and wellness centres and more through active promotions specifically for digital nomads. Digital nomads can now enjoy up to RM50 per booking for selected products and services listed on the Tourplus App. For further information on the accreditation or grant, interested operators can contact the Tourplus hotline at: +6017-6295561 or email [email protected]

Tourplus partners MDEC to prepare accommodation operators for De Rantau influx of digital nomads

By Dzof Azmi           December 12, 2021
Having entrepreneur’s mindset since age 14 means not giving up so easily
Expansion into the Chinese market delayed due to Covid-19 pandemic
Digital News Asia (DNA) continues its series that profiles 50 influencers who are helping shape Malaysia’s Digital Economy, from Digerati50 2020-2021 (Vol 4), a special biennial print publication released in July 2020. The digital copy can be downloaded from the sidebar link. The following in an expanded version of the article which first appeared in print edition in June 2020. Being a tech entrepreneur is perhaps something Rickson Goh was destined for. At 14 he created a website for his school serving more than 20,000 users. It didn’t have a business model, but it did eventually see 3,000 users a day. It’s no surprise, then, that Rickson would take an idea he had while studying at the Queensland University of Technology in 2012 into fruition. He had formed a team of four to start work on an app that can automate the entire process of travelling, from itinerary planning to transportation booking. That became the basis of his startup, Tourplus Technology Sdn Bhd, though it ended up being an idea that took a while to bear. Upon graduation, Rickson found himself working at Maybank Group’s Strategy & Transformation Department, reporting directly to the CEO. The experience helped him understood how businesses and technology can work together. Tourplus would eventually surface in 2015 as a virtual travel assistance that also allowed people to share their customised itineraries. That’s when Rickson realised a limitation to his original idea – it didn’t have a strong business model. Having an entrepreneur’s mindset since he was 14 means that Rickson wasn’t giving up so easily. While the initial two years of Tourplus was difficult, it wasn’t for naught – Rickson noticed that users were asking about how they could get around to the spots they wanted to visit. They asked about transportation, and guides to share local and cultural contexts. Rickson made his first pivot in 2017, focusing on a web model that allows travellers to make inquiries through a website and subsequently matching guides and trips there. In 2018, he released an app for tour guides to receive bookings for their services, including airport pickups. That eventually became one of the key services of Tourplus. “Our main product is the day/multiday tours targeted at families and friends travelling in groups of more than four people where they can book larger vehicles for their tours which ends up being cheaper as well,” he says. But it’s the fact that you can personalised your multi-day tours is what sets Tourplus apart. Rickson recognises that travellers are increasingly more independent and prefer to travel at their own pace. With Tourplus, they can essentially personalised their own tours, with Tourplus matching their destinations with the right local guides. This time, the idea proved successful, netting Tourplus the “Top Digital Tourism” Award at the World Top Tourism Awards in 2019. In December 2019, the startup announced that it had raised a US$400,000 (RM1.7 million) pre-seed round from China-based accelerator SOSV and a Chinese angel investor in the travel space. The funding was actually raised months earlier when Tourplus was accepted by SOSV into its accelerator programme and received a US$150,000 investment from the accelerator. During the three month programme, Tourplus was exposed to some angel investors, one of whom invested US$250,000. [RM1 = US$0.237]
Tourplus isn’t just changing the way people travel, but also helping the community of local tour guides. For one, Rickson and his team are constantly working with industry players and local ministries to identify new travel trends. Tourplus is also providing much-needed transparency and trust to local tours, which are not usually carried out by licensed tour guides. The app, however, provides detailed travel itineraries and guides that are verified and curated by Tourplus. Tourplus had over 2,700 licensed tour guides around Southeast Asia as at end May 2020. 2020 – the big year that was hit by a pandemic
2020 was supposed to be a big year for Tourplus. As it is Visit Malaysia 2020, Tourplus is set to facilitate the travels of various tourists to the country – it even signed a strategic partnership with Oversea Chinese Media and Communications Co Ltd to promote Malaysian tourism to Chinese tourists. This expansion into the Chinese market had to be delayed, however, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Ever resilient to change, Rickson made a temporary pivot in order to keep Tourplus relevant. His biggest concern was helping the local tour guides under their platform to stay afloat during the tourism downturn. He collaborated with frozen food companies which were also affected by the pandemic, as the establishments they distribute to – hotels, restaurants, wedding receptions – were either closed or reducing their orders. These frozen food suppliers, which primarily operate on a B2B model, had to supply to customers directly in order to survive. The challenge, however, is that they never had logistical capabilities to distribute directly to customers. Here is where Tourplus’ network of guides came in. Stationed across the nation, including secondary cities like Taiping and Muar, these guides did not have an income stream now, but they did have transportation. Through this collaboration with the frozen food suppliers, Tourplus would serve as a distributor while the guides served as agents. “This is a challenge for us, and completely different from what we have done before,” Rickson says. “It’s not our core business, but we need to do what we can to survive. It’s basically a new startup – one that we built upon our own basic understanding and resources.”
[Ed: The business was closed a few months later in Nov 2020 due to the cold chain requirements of moving frozen food.] Rickson, however, still wants to return to the travel industry. “People will still be travelling, but it will be mostly localised. For our guide business, it will be a challenge, because Malaysians won’t have transportation issues that they need to solve unlike foreign tourists,” he notes. Yet, there will be a demand for local travellers seeking to hire larger transportation modes for their own travel itinerary – a gap that Tourplus can fill. At the same time, Rickson predicts that business travel will resume faster than leisure travels, an aspect Tourplus can also help with. Rickson and Tourplus have seen ups and downs, yet they’ve managed to adapt and evolve when need be. Not all travel plans go smoothly, after all. Digerati50 2020/2021 is proudly sponsored by Maxis - Powering Malaysia's 5G era.

Digerati50: Rickson Goh finds a detour for Tourplus

By Karamjit Singh           August 20, 2021
Tourplus CEO embodies founder hustle, with keen eye for opportunity
Founders have the highest responsibility, must exude optimism & hope
If you want to look at how well startup founders in Malaysia have coped with the Covid-19 pandemic, few have acquitted themselves as well as Rickson Goh, the soft spoken founder of travel tech startup, Tourplus Technology Sdn Bhd. Not only did he manage to raise eyebrows in the ecosystem with a successful US$1 million seed capital fund raise last October, in the midst of a brutal standstill of the tourism market in Malaysia, but he has gone on to build some partnerships that will position his travel tech startup quite nicely when the tourism rebound happens. Plus, he has also started talking to investors on raising his next round as he projects revenue for 2021 to hit US$1.65 million (RM7 million) – almost none of it coming from travel. So, what is he smoking and what is he spiking in his teh tarik? Turns out it is nothing more than founder hustle and a keen eye for opportunity. Cuts win-win deal with Tourism Selangor
Last week, Tourplus issued a straightforward press release announcing that it had partnered with Tourism Selangor to build a mobile app for the state agency, which had no mobile app before this. But the real story here is that Tourplus has entered into a 50:50 profit share agreement with Tourism Selangor for any sales that come through the app, called Go Selangor. Even better, the state agency will be encouraging all travel related suppliers in its database to start digitalising their operations, introducing Tourplus to those who are interested (although this is not an exclusive arrangement). As Rickson notes, most of these travel players are small companies and would have been near impossible for Tourplus to get into. Instead, now it gets a credible state agency to make the introduction. “We expect the app will go live in Oct 2021,” says Rickson. “Tourism Selangor will endorse and recommend the operators to us, Tourplus will discuss commercial arrangements and setup in the app, operate and do the payout, etc,” he explains. Go Selangor will be the official travel app for the state government as Selangor doubles efforts to help the travel ecosystem to be ready for the post-pandemic travel rebound. A key part of the efforts to get ecosystem players, most of whom are SMEs, ready, is to encourage them to digitalise so that their travel packages, services and inventory can be added to Go Selangor. Rickson, who mooted the idea in March with endorsement by the Selangor Information Technology and Digital Economy Corp in July, believes this collaboration will help more rural operators or “hidden gem providers” that are not in the main stream platforms like Klook. It is also a sweet deal for Rickson who gets to add new inventory to his database while gearing himself for the post-pandemic rebound. The collaboration is the latest in a series of deals he has cut since his October fundraising last year. The timing could not have been better as his back was against the wall by then. It was not an easy time, he admits. Hardly any revenue was coming in and, “We were running out of money then.”
The team had lost hope and even Rickson (pic) struggled to see any ray of light. “It was very hard for me. I was spending day and night trying to figure out a way to survive. We founders have the highest responsibility. No matter how we feel inside, and sometimes I felt helpless, but we have to exude hope and optimism for the team,” he says. A brief foray into delivering frozen food to consumers failed to take off. But the key moment was when he decided that there was not going to be any international travel for at least 24-months. It was a chilling realisation for a startup that had positioned its future on the back of inbound travel into Malaysia. Hanging out in Parliament, getting TSP status, convincing investors
Rickson swung into action. As the early months of the pandemic lockdowns saw webinars soar in popularity, Rickson started attending quite a few to learn from other entrepreneurs. He also paid attention to and learned about the various government initiatives to help businesses cope and realised that there was opportunity to help local players go digital. For Rickson, this was going to be the lifeline while waiting for domestic tourism to spring back to life. “I managed to convince my investors that domestic tourism was the way forward and that there was short-term opportunity in the various government Covid aid recovery programs.”
One key advantage he had was the strong government relations he built up over a short period of time. “It was not from getting any projects but helping government to digitise brick and mortar companies, specifically those in the travel sector,” he says. This involved him going to the Malaysian Parliament to meet relevant ministers to make his pitch which helped Tourplus get recognised as a TSP (Technology Service Provider). This recognition allowed Tourplus to help companies apply for the Digital Marketing Grant which is part of the Malaysian Government’s efforts to help businesses recover from the pandemic impact. “They were eligible to receive up to a RM5,00 grant and we managed to get 200 companies approved thus far from a total of 800 that we submitted for the grant.”
This work not only keeps his 20-strong team (30% are part-time) busy but has helped with cash flow as well. Key collaborations in China, instant access to 200k hotel rooms globally
One key collaboration from April this year was between Chinese travel agency ChongQing China Youth Travel Service with Rickson still aiming to capture some of the 3 million annual Chinese tourists to Malaysia. “Travel is still our primary business and even though we raised funds, it won’t last us forever if the travel restrictions stay in place,” Rickson says, adding that income and cash flow need to be watched very carefully. “We need to keep innovating as well and I need to hire tech people, UI/UX designers, product people which will also help us scale.”
Another exciting development, one that he has kept under wraps is a partnership he has struck with China’s largest OTA (Online Travel Agency), the Nasdaq listed Ctrip. Thanks to an API integration, users of the Tourplus app can now also directly book 200,000 hotel rooms from all over the world where Ctrip has hotel partners. “It is a very exclusive priviledge to be given the trust of API integration with a company like Ctrip, says Rickson. That likely cuts both ways as Ctrip, which was founded in 1999, probably sees a little bit of itself in the feisty startup from Kuala Lumpur and its gritty founder.

Rickson Goh shows how you deal with a pandemic

Tourplus inks MoU with China's CYTS to tap into post COVID-19 inbound tourism market
27/04/2021 02:18 PM
KUALA LUMPUR, April 27 -- Tourplus Technology Sdn Bhd, a Malaysian travel tech startup inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with ChongQing China Youth Travel Services Co Ltd (CYTS) to tap into the huge potential of post COVID-19 Chinese inbound market into Malaysia. Tourplus said currently there is a robust rebound in China’s domestic tourism market and the China Tourism Research Institute predicted that in the first half of 2021, the number of domestic tourists will reach 1.722 billion person-trips, and the revenue will reach 1.28 trillion yuan. On the outbound trend, it noted that looking back at the pre-pandemic era, the market size of Chinese visitors into Malaysia was a massive 3 million on an annual basis. Chief excutive officer and founder Rickson Goh said the partnership between Tourplus and CYTS is to prepare for post COVID-19 China outbound travellers coming into Malaysia and other ASEAN countries. “The MoU states that Tourplus will be the tour supplier to CYTS to promote in the China market through both online and offline channels. “Although historically the pre-COVID market size into the country from China is huge, to start off modestly, we are targeting 100,000 Chinese travellers inbound with a target revenue of RM10 million via this partnership,” he said in a statement. Goh said Tourplus is also keen to explore potential partnerships with different parties and to look towards potential future opportunities, where travel demand is expected to be extremely high. “Once borders are open and vaccines are being distributed and people are getting vaccinated, we believe travel demand will soar. “As a travel tech company, we are investing a lot more compared to the pre-COVID days to position ourselves with first mover advantage to increase the market share once international travel is allowed,” he shared. Meanwhile, CYTS chairman Chen Wei Dong said the company sought the opportunity to cooperate with a leading Malaysia-based travel tech, Tourplus, to seize the opportunity of China outbound tourism in the post-COVID era, and better contribute to the “Belt and Road” initiative. “This collaboration is to kick-start Tourplus’ business development in China. We are looking forward to more Chinese tourists travelling to Malaysia for sightseeing, culture exchange and bringing more business opportunities between the people of China and Malaysia,” he added. -- BERNAMA

Business : Tourplus inks MoU with China's CYTS to tap into post COVID-19 inbound tourism market

Malaysian travel tech startup, Tourplus Technology Sdn Bhd has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with ChongQing China Youth Travel Services Co Ltd to target China’s inbound tourism market. “The partnership between Tourplus and CYTS is to prepare for Post Covid China travellers outbound coming into Malaysia and ASEAN countries. Although historically the pre-Covid market size […]

Tourplus Targets China’s Inbound Tourism Market Through MoU With CYTS

Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC) directs and oversees Malaysia's National ICT (Information & Communication Technology) Initiative, the MSC Malaysia (formerly known as the Multimedia Super Corridor in Malaysia).

Multimedia Development Corporation

Malaysian travel tech startup , Tourplus Technology Sdn Bhd has announced its partnership with Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation to provide accreditation status to accommodation operators under the De Rantau programme .

Tourplus And MDEC Partners To Gear Accommodation Operators For DE Rantau Programme Through Accreditation And Grant - Disruptr MY

China Youth Travel Service is a pioneer in the business of tourism industry. It is based in Dongcheng District, Beijing.

China Youth Travel Service

ACI Worldwide

Maybank

Evobar

The travel tech collection includes companies offering tech-enabled services and products for tourists and travel players (hotels, airlines, airports, cruises, etc.). It excludes financial services and micro-mobility solutions.

Travel Technology (Travel Tech)

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Tourplus connects local guides with travelers allowing them to plan their holiday without worrying about security, language barrier, and local knowledge. It helps travelers connect directly to a local guide by booking through a website and mobile application and helps local guides to earn income using the application to ease managing the tour. The company was founded in 2015 and is based in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia.

Name	Rickson Goh
Work History	ACI Worldwide, Maybank, and Evobar
Title	Founder, Chief Executive Officer
Status	Current

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