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Travel + Web 2.0 = Success?
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It wouldn’t be wrong if last year was called the year of the travel portals. As more than a dozen travel portals were launched and almost half a dozen got funded.
Among all the travel portals the ones like Yatra, Makemytrip, Travelguru, Cleartrip and Ezeego1 have a lot of muscle power due to the funding and backing of large companies and VC’s.
But if last year was the year of banner ads and TV ads for these portals this year seems to be the year of web 2.0 buzz and pull marketing.
Makemytrip along with their agency Webchutney were the early movers when it came to linking web 2.0 to travel. Their travel community Oktatabyebye which started as a contest has now graduated into a full fledged community with travelogues, travel QnA, polls, photos, videos, destination features, hotel reviews and recommendations with friends, family and other members of the site.
The other travel portal Cleartrip.com till now has had a different approach to web 2.0. They have used web 2.0 to get closer to their customers and get instant customer feedback by having an official cleartrip blog. They have also been bold enough to keep all the negative comments by readers on the blog itself. A way to communicate their openess to customers.
Then comes Yatra.com which is backed by Reliance and web 18 and has started a travel social community in Raahi.com. It has blogs, photos with ratings and comments, a city guide and a listing of latest and most popular posts. In the sidebar there is an option to ‘plan your trip’, using Yatra.com.
Finally even the latest entrant ezeego1.com which is promoted by the giant offine travel company Cox and Kings has also hinted at launching video blogs to promote travel related interactivity.
Cox&Kings India’s Chief Executive Officer Urrshila Kerkar said, "We would be soon introducing travel blogs, that are unique. By this we would also encourage travellers to post their travel videos with their comments on the website. We would provide them the medium to do so."
Well the way things are going it seems Travel + web 2.0 is the way to success for most travel portals but i guess the one which creates the strongest association between community and commerce is the one that will take the cake in the end. After all travel portals survive on the basis of transactions and not sale of ads on travel communities so web 2.0 that impacts transactions in a positive way is what all these travel potals would and should be gunning for.
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Would definitely add http://www.holidayiq.com to the list of Web 2.0 Travel sites. They have reasonably large body of User Generated Content already in place (Reviews, Photos etc..)