MakeMyTrip.com and Airtel DTH announced earlier this week that the travel portal will provide information about its holiday packages to Airtel’s DTH users.
The packages will be available on the iTravel interactive channel of Airtel Digital TV. To buy a package, viewers can send an SMS to a particular code and will be contacted by the MMT sales team to complete the purchase.
Afaqs makes a fine point when it says that DTH operators can only differentiate themselves through their channel packages and interactive content. Therefore, content alliances, such as this, help in retaining viewers. And we have seen this earlier as well with the online matrimony space tying up with DTH providers.
Makemytrip has been in pursuit of other avenues since deciding to move out of its core business of air ticketing. We had covered them claiming the largest bus ticket inventory for instance a while back. The itneresting point to note in this news is that the service is for users to buy holiday packages, again anon core business that Makemytrip has been focussing on since some while. Deep Karla had mentioned about these revenue streams in his WATShow with us.
However, I actually have doubts on how far this media could work to build revenues for Makemytrip. To me it just seems an added marketign line that Airtel can use to sell it’s DTH package. Holiday is usually a planned affair and can’t be decided on a whim looking at a TV channel no matter how alluring a package they display..it’s not grocery after all. On the brighter side however, this can drive more people to Makemytrip’s site to make the booking or find more information, perhaps housewives or the college crowd ( i.e. segments yet to digitise themselves completely).
The chances of hearing news like this is something we had predicted in one of our analysis of the OTA and Travel space:
“…The situation also calls for aggressive marketing tactics which can be expected in a highly competitive market. While the downside of course is the dwindling pie, on the other hand it can drive up growth of the online segment which will be good for the entire Indian e-commerce industry in general. Aggressive marketing will also bring in VAS into play with added dangling carrots for the user. So one can expect travel discounts, combined holiday packages, convenient booking systems and perhaps more intuitive and hassle free interfaces….”
And there is still scope to hear more stuff on these lines this year.
