Comments on: Travel Update: Travel Portals Looking at Models Beyond Ticketing as Margins Dwindle. A Birds Eye View of Online Travel in India and Insights on the Future

By: Rima T

Rima T — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 11:37:27 +0000

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.

By: Sonia Malhotra

Sonia Malhotra — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 10:20:14 +0000

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

By: raghav soni

raghav soni — Thu, 22 May 2008 14:15:07 +0000

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

By: Balaji

Balaji — Thu, 22 May 2008 11:15:10 +0000

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

By: praveen

praveen — Thu, 22 May 2008 10:18:18 +0000

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

By: Utkarsh

Utkarsh — Thu, 22 May 2008 08:57:04 +0000

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??