AsiaRooms.com closes its doors after losing money for seven years

SINGAPORE — In a move that caught its employees off-guard, travel website AsiaRooms.com has ceased operations, citing persistent losses for the past seven years.

The 23 staff in the Singapore office were informed of the closure on Feb 25 and told to pack up on the same day, even though the website did not go offline for more than two weeks after.

AsiaRooms.com is under TLRG, which also owns the brands LateRooms.com and MalaPronta.com. Their parent company is TUI Group, a multinational travel and tourism company. By April 2, visitors to AsiaRooms.com were redirected to LateRooms.com.

In an internal email seen by TODAY, TLRG managing director Jesper With-Fogstrup said AsiaRooms.com has faced “a number of difficulties in terms of trading” for some time now.

“While we have invested significantly in the business over the years in order to position it for future profitable growth, it has struggled both to maintain a strong position in the Asia-Pacific online travel agency market, and to deliver in terms of expected commercial performance, having operated at a loss for the past seven years,” he said.

The decision to close AsiaRooms, while “a difficult one”, will allow the company to redirect their energies into returning LateRooms.com back to growth, he added.

Responding to TODAY’s queries, Ms Andrea Tarpey, TLRG’s Head of Communications, attributed the shutdown to a “highly competitive market”, saying the website has “struggled to perform in line with expectations and we have not seen the improvements needed in order to support further investment”.

She added: “We’re pleased to say that there will be no changes for our customers: All future bookings are still valid and will be handled as normal, with the same contact team in place to manage customer support.”

A staff member who declined to be named said the move came as a shock.

“We didn’t see it coming. It’s really disappointing because we’ve put in a lot of hard work into the brand and it disappeared just like that,” she said.

It is understood the company paid one-month’s salary for each year of service with an extra month’s salary as bonus.

When it was operational, AsiaRooms.com’s website said it operated in approximately 180 countries, serving more than 30 million customers in over 20 source markets, and employing about 48,000 people worldwide.