The conversations at the Avani+ Riverside Bangkok Hotel during the Skift Asia Forum made one thing clear: the travel industry is facing a massive reality check. On stage and in the corridors, the recurring theme was how to define who “owns” the traveler. Airlines naturally feel the customer belongs to them because they issued the ticket; hotels because the guest sleeps under their roof; OTAs because the booking went through their platform. It is a traditional, territorial way of thinking that has shaped B2B relationships for decades. But in a market like Asia, where 80% of the hotel landscape has historically been independent and fragmented, and consumers live inside regional superapps, the idea that any single brand can isolate and own a customer is a complete illusion.
Look at how traditional travel partnerships actually operate today. For decades, the industry has relied on a mechanical script for ancillary revenue. You buy a flight or book a room, and you are immediately bombarded with pop-ups selling car rentals, generic insurance, or cookie-cutter tours. It is noisy, transactional, and travelers are tired of it. Vinay Surana from Allianz Partners pointed this out during the forum, suggesting that brands must move away from the obsession with owning the relationship. If your partnership strategy is still just about splitting minor commissions on passive affiliate links, it is time to rethink the model. Why are we still forcing products that consumers explicitly try to skip?
The strategy usually collapses the moment the trip actually begins. Travel brands spend millions developing proprietary apps, digital check-in software, and AI concierges. But what happens when an international traveler lands in Bangkok or Jakarta? To move, eat, or pay, they need immediate access to local networks like Grab. If your customer is standing at arrivals, desperately hunting for a plastic SIM card, wrestling with a paperclip, or rationing data out of roaming anxiety, your expensive brand app is useless at that moment. It doesn’t matter how beautiful your user interface is if the phone is offline.
The dominance of Asian superapps offers a massive lesson in operational focus. Philipp Kandal, Chief Product Officer at Grab, explained that their ecosystem wasn’t built by trapping users, but by becoming a daily necessity. When the travel industry discusses “high-touch” service, the mind often goes to premium lounges or traditional concierges. But David Liu from Klook dismantled this definition during his panel: modern high-touch service is simply technology delivering exactly what the consumer needs at the precise millisecond of need. For an airline or a hotel, that means recognizing that data is the foundational infrastructure of the entire trip. If you do not help your traveler solve their connectivity problem before they cross the border, you are actively outsourcing the most critical part of their experience to a random airport kiosk.
The future of travel partnerships requires strict operational integration. When an airline or a travel provider embeds global eSIM connectivity directly into the booking flow, they are not just adding a tech feature to make a quick sale. They are protecting their own digital investments. They are ensuring that the guest can actually open their app, order their services, and navigate the destination without friction from second one.
Stop trying to build walled gardens. The travel brands that will win in the next decade won’t be those trying to own the traveler, but those building the strongest ecosystems of partners capable of removing friction across the entire journey. Connectivity is a critical piece of that puzzle, but the broader opportunity lies in creating seamless experiences through strategic partnerships that deliver value exactly when travelers need it. True loyalty isn’t about capturing the customer, it is about keeping them connected to the world.
