Agoda and WWF-SG sail off to support marine habitat restoration efforts

Travel brand Agoda and World Wide Fund for Nature Singapore (WWF-Singapore) have launched a campaign to support marine habitat restoration efforts, as part of the launch of Agoda's Eco Deal programme. As part of the campaign, WWF-Singapore, Agoda, and Agoda's hotel and accommodation partners, will fund efforts to raise awareness about responsible tourism, enabling the restoration of marine habitats in Southeast Asia, and protecting widlife affected by floods in Australia. As such, the campaign is aimed at travellers who are interested in supporting environment and community projects. 

The collaboration is part of Agoda's Eco Deals program, where the travel brand will collaborate with its accommodation partners to offer deals that give-back and highlight responsible tourism, environmental or community-led charities and organisations.

According to the brand's Sustainable Travel Trends Survey 2021, Agoda found that consumers want to travel more sustainably, and that polluted beaches and waterways ranked as the top concern of Filipino tourists; second for Australians, Indonesian, and Malaysians; and third for Singaporeans. As such, Agoda's Eco Deals will first launch with accommodation partners in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Australia, and the Philippines, to offer travellers discounts on their bookings. For each booking, Agoda will contribute to WWF-Singapore’s marine conservation and flood-affected wildlife protection.

To complement this, Agoda will develop an Eco Deals badge to support and highlight internal participating properties. Additionally, the brand will launch a dedicated landing page to help consumers quickly find properties that support the Eco Deals activity. 

“In a post-COVID world, people are more aware of their impact on the places and communities they visit when travelling and are actively looking for ways and means to make their ecological footprint smaller. Through Agoda’s Eco Deals initiative, we provide consumers opportunities to ‘give back’ as part of our partners’ and Agoda’s social responsibility commitment,” said Enric Casals, regional vice president Southeast Asia and Oceania.

“The ocean is the largest ecosystem on the planet, covering more than 70% of the earth’s surface area. However, many of the marine ecosystems have been facing existential threats due to human activities and we must take action now,” said WWF-Singapore’s CEO, R. Raghunathan. In light of this, he explained that WWF-Singapore is well-positioned to drive positive change in the Coral Triange and wider region, which is home to the world's epicentre of marine biodiversity. "We look forward to working with Agoda in this partnership to support the conservation of marine ecosystems in this region,” he added.

Agoda is an online travel platform that leverages technology to make travel for consumers easier. Headquarted in Singapore, it is part of Booking Holdings, and employs more than 5,000 staff in 37 markets. According to Agoda's LinkedIn, the brand has a network of over 2,900,000 properties worldwide. The brand offers destinations in Kuala Lumpar, Manila, Jakarta, and Los Angelas, among others, according to Agoda's website. 

Throughout the past few years, Agoda has doubled down on partnership with various brands. 

Just last year, Agoda partnered with Shopee to launch Shopee Hotel, which allowed Shopee users to access the travel platforms' inventories of hotels, resorts, and homes through the app. It was rolled out across different Southeast Asian markets - Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines. Agoda's chief commercial officer, Damien Pfirsch, said preiously that its partnership with Shopee will conveniently bring its deals and offerings to Shopee Hotel customers, on a platform they are familiar with. “At the same time, we can better support our hotel partners and tourism operators by connecting them to the biggest online community of shoppers in Southeast Asia. Such partnerships will help accelerate the recovery of the domestic and global travel and tourism industry in the long term," he added.

Separately, AirAsia.com and Agoda teamed up to offer travellers access to a more extensive multi-product selection, enjoy greater convenience and benefit through the sharing of flight and hotel inventories in 2020. The tie-up included joint product marketing, membership privileges and travel bundles. According to AirAsia.com previously, the collaboration between two major online travel services providers in the region "harnesses the synergistic strengths of both digital platforms". 

Photo courtesy: 123RF

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