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iXiGo Launches Mobile Version of Travel Search - Looking To Eliminate Other OTA’s
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Just recently iXiGo.com had announced its tieup with Ndtv convergence for powering Ndtvtravels.com now iXiGo.com has launched a mobile version of its travel search engine. One can access this on m.ixigo.com
This is a move by iXiGO to tap the busy on the move executive who would be using this service to search for available tickets. iXiGO Mobile has a unique feature of click-to-call booking mechanism which enables people to speak directly with the call centres of respective airlines and hotel booking providers.
On the expansion options of this mobile version iXiGo Founder and CEO Aloke Bajpai said, “Next, we will be actively signing up distribution partners for this service – operators, mobile VAS providers and mobile media companies. They will benefit from a great mobile travel product and quality content, and we will expand our pan-India reach”.
iXiGO’s direct-booking model by-passes online travel agents (think the yatra’s, cleartrips of the world) and allows users to save booking fees charged by them. This obviously wont go down well with OTA’s who are anyways laying off people and ofcourse are facing a pretty bad recession as well.
iXiGo is not an OTA. It is a meta-search site which necessarily has to redirect requests to the hosting site.
As far as flights are concerned, with a zero commission model coming in soon, there will be a difference of 100 bucks on an average between prices published by Airlines and OTA’s.
I don’t see how this will make much of a difference to any OTA.
IXIGO Founder Alok has shown tremendous strength in terms of his vision and the manner he is making it come true. Congratulations to Alok and team! You guys are setting example in the Indian startups landscape.
@Rajat Goyal: Hi Rajat I never said iXiGo was an ota but by directing users directly to airline sites its certainly eliminating the OTA whether thats a margin of 100 bucks or less.
@Rajiv: I agree with you in principle. But in practice, to the user it is just another service. They will still go with the greatest value add. A meta-search by nature cannot create special offers/price valuations for the consumer. They can only offer what the airline is offering. And even then, airlines reserve some offers for their own web-specials.
I’d say the mantle has been thrown, lets see who picks it up.
@Rajiv: Interesting innovation - thanks for the post.
@Rajat: “And even then, airlines reserve some offers for their own web-specials.” means you did’t understand the value proposition of a tool like iXiGO. They search airlines’ sites, which means they display all the web-specials which airlines showcase on their own platform.
Average difference between OTA prices and iXiGO could be “just” a few hundred bucks on metros, but it could very well run into thousands on tier 2 cities, try Bangalore - Chandigarh and you’ll see what I mean.
Disclaimer: Have used iXiGO in the past and liked the way they saved me time and money.
hmm… wrong time to launch in a recession esp when people are trying to avoid flight because of their increasing charges