Get ready for Maha yatra
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Yatra is one travel portal that is targetting the masses in a big way and when i say masses i mean B and C class towns and cities in a bid to differentiate itself from other travel portals. To make sure it keeps up to its indian name Its also promoting online visibility of low budget hotels, which cannot afford to go online. They plan to do so by providing these hotels an access to technology, thereby acting as the marketing arm for these smaller hotels. Currently an alliance with over 1,000 hotels across 140 cities which helps them offer ranges from Rs 250 to Rs 25,000 per room night.
Not only cheap hotels according to an interview given by Dhruv Shringi CEO of Yatra they plan to provide offline services as well by setting up centres in 70-80 cities and having payment options other than credit card like Net banking, pay at the reception on arrivaland cash cards from semi-urban areas.
And this is not all they plan to market their services by leveraging their association with Reliance capital by offering discounts to reliance mobile users which gives them a reach which is far greater than most online travel portals. The buck doesn’t stop here they also plan to offer the Reliance Web World customers option to pay cash at the kiosk itself after they book an airline ticket or a hotel room from the Web world. This service is expected to be launched by 1st October in 30-40 centres.
Now how much Yatra expects to garner as market share in the Travel market?
By the end of 2006, the company is looking at achieving 25 per cent of the market share in an online travel segment!
Now that i would say is ambitious but not impossible given the fact that they have not only the mobile communication and the web centres of reliance that they can leverage they also have the TV channels of TV18 which is another investor in Yatra.
UPDATE ADDED : The founders of Yatra are Non Resident Indians (NRIs) and seasoned travel industry executives who have returned to India to launch the first online and centralized travel services company of its kind. The founders, Dhruv Shringi and Manish Amin, bring a combination of 45 years of travel experience and 15 years of online travel experience to Yatra. Most recently, they worked together to help build and manage one of Europe’s largest online travel businesses, Ebookers Plc, which was recently acquired by travel giant Cendant Corporation (market capitalization: US$17.98bn) for US$410mn.
But in that case lets see why such biggies are looking at the online travel market..
A new report by PhoCusWright, "The Emerging Online Travel Marketplace in India," estimates that online leisure/unmanaged business travel gross bookings in India totaled $295 million in 2005 and will grow nearly sevenfold in just three years to go beyond $2.0 billion by 2008.
Both supply and demand forces are responsible for the booming growth.
The issues with online travel could be small fragmented offline players and apprehension towards credit card usage - both of which i guess yatra is proactive in addressing these issues already.
All i can say is that we should all get ready for a MAHA Yatra as this si one travel portal which not only has the money, the right investors but i feel they have the right strategy as well to give their competition a lot of worries.
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