Firstly I don’t think many of the ‘travel’ portals that mainly sell tickets can be considered as ‘travel’ portals anyway. They are ticketing portals. Or rather they were. Some of them are changing their business models to grow beyond their existing revenue sources.
At a recent summit I spoke to Amitabh Pandey, the head of E – Biz at Thomas Cook, he too was of the opinion that the OTA’s or Online Ticketing Agents need to step up. Currently, with just ticketing they do not hold too much promise. They also aren’t a threat to the big guys like Thomas Cook.
But there are some interesting tie ups happening in the space and many of these portals are looking to expand their scope. They are firstly looking at Travel 2.0 i.e. Travel along with Social Networking Features, Comparisons, Travel Tips, UGC etc. These are feature additions that will make the scope of these portals grow in the consumers mind, which is very important as well (to drive loyalty et al, which at this time is quite pathetic)
TravelGuru bought out Desiya early late last year (December) for $25 Million and it looked to change the fact that 70% of its revenues came from ticketing. It now has 90% of its sales coming from hotel bookings. Further, it is also looking at being the complete holiday portal with things like car rentals, sight seeing packages et al being thrown in or in the pipeline.
Cleartrip has launched Rail Search recently – so even though this is a feature addition within ticketing, the guys at Cleartrip are looking beyond airlines in a big way. Cleartrip expects non airline revenues to go up to 20% this year. Cleartrip also got funded recently for $18.5 Million (They think its “more money than required”). They are looking to use that money to create an Offline Presence. Not too much has been said on their decision to be a full-fledged Online Travel Destination.
MakeMyTrip is clearly looking beyond ticketing and that reflects in their branding as well. They launched “Holiday Plus”sometime back to sell the entire holiday experience online to consumers. MakeMyTrip had also launched some initiatives to go offline; ditto with Indiatimes Travel. They are obviously looking to reach markets that do now have Internet access and engage them.
Incidentally, keeping in mind ‘branding’ – one look at the names of all these portals and it is clear that they intended to have features beyond ticketing at inception. It is just that ticketing, and airline ticketing mostly was the low hanging fruit.
Even though Travel Guru is positioning itself as a strong hotel search booking destination, one firm that is making a headway is HolidayIQ – particularly in the Hotel Search space. They have had some smart moves; they power Google India’s Local Search and are now also featured on Yahoo! India’s Glue Pages.
It seems like along with delivery options, payment options are going to expand as well. There will be:
Credit cards, Net Banking, Cash cards, Payments through the mobile (GPRS + SMS?), Payments by Cash, And more as they come
Along with that there lies some obvious scope for VAS as well. So one could sell Visas, SIM Cards (Matrix as a partner?), Special Credit Cards (with a loyalty feature combined), Shopping Deals through tie ups – and the ideas are endless. These things will enable OTA’s to become complete Travel Solution Providers.
An interesting anecdote – Airtel will soon provide International PCO’s in taxis at the International Airports so that foreign travellers can call home one they land. Also taxi drivers will be able to sell SIM Cards. Distribution is the key and one must remember that in a country like ours, the Internet is not the ONLY medium that can have broad based distribution. A beautiful model I would say.
In any case, Online Travel is expected to be big. It is projected to cross $6 Billion by 2010 according to Dhruv Shringi, CEO of Yatra.
Anyone knows any sources for Online Travel Consumer Behaviour Insights? The IAMAI had an Online Travel Conference Recently (2nd May) – wasn’t able to catch that one. Anyone who went there – if you have something to share (specifically about consumer insights); would be great!
Where does Yatra exactly fit ?? I think those guys will invariably imitate Cleartrip. after seeing them copy Cleartrip’s fare calendar, I wonder what else they’d copy??
Another interesting and important aspect is that though Thomas cook does not feel threatened the online portals are also setting up offline shops and getting sub-agents to book through them. The sub-agents business in other words the B2B channel is quite huge and there are big names associated with this, and these big names depend majorly on the small agents.
Hence the portals are not just adding up value to bring in more business, they are also getting into grabbing share from other channels of distribution
Indeed the space is hotting up! When you see that Subiksha is setting up a ‘Travel’ portal, one fails to understand whether its really a Travel initiative or simply maximizing RoI of thier retail footprint.
I completely agree with Harshil’s PoV; there’s so much to be done in terms of fresh ideas, & innovation in this space. Its so tiring to see online ticketing companies desperately positioning themselves as online Travel entities
when airline companies are loosing money nd cant find enough funding there counterparts selling tickets are making a hay from vc’s these companies need to look beyond airline travelling as the margins in that is either 100 rs. per ticket or higher if they can afford to swindle there customer……..ixigo in this space is really nice as it disconnects middleman between booking tickets ….so saving u money nd time……..ixigo can cut monopoly of yatra nd sum other portals……integration would be the key factor if they can become 1 stop travel shop for airline,taxis,hotels then they can succeed immensely……….another factor would be opening of railway sector for agent booking….then they would be fighting for railway ticket space
Consolidation is the way to go & not only OTAs but people are looking forward to Meta Search engines.
Regards
Sonia Malhotra
Internetpreneur
http://www.GhumiChale.com
India’s First Hotels Comparison engine
Its a growing business and I don’t think its only restricted to only air travel , trains are largely booked by online payments , also a survey conducted on bus travel have show that from a small sample size of 200 , 120 respondents felt that http://www.ticketvala.com is ideal for booking Volvo bus tickets.
Its a large industry now , and the value chain is long , we have cars, hotels , customized solution etc everyone a part of this huge industry.