Visitors to www.sify.com will now be able to compare offers on various hotels, check the customer reviews and make booking from a host of travel products available on the Internet. The proud release is of course because International travel biggie Sprice is now powering its travel search.
Venkata Rao Mallineni, Head-Portals & Consumer Marketing, Sify Technologies Limited, said, “With an increased number of people moving to Internet for buying travel related products we decided to launch travel search that functions as one-stop-shop for all travel requirements. We are happy to have a partner like Sprice.com that has a deep understanding of travel search business and has an enviable track record of delivering best-of-the-class solutions.”
“With an increased number of people moving to Internet for buying travel related products we decided to launch travel search that functions as one-stop-shop for all travel requirements.” – In my personal opinion this is just purely a standard PR line and the fact can very well be Sprice.com pitching in hard for sify to integrate their technology into the search. And this isn’t a judgmental opinion. Sprice has been active on the Indian front. It had earlier tied up the Indian Express group for a similar service.
While I sincerely hope the amount of people coming over to the web in search of travel related product is increasing the numbers just don’t suggest that. I have been of the view that the travel industry needs to consolidate since quite a while now. And the reason is the crowded niche and the dearth of large growth in the market. In such a time newer news like this doesn’t quite sound like music to the ears.
The point to note however, and the one these guys seem to bank on is a report by leading travel industry research firm PhoCusWright, Indian Online travel industry grew by 51% and is estimated at $2,004 million (around $2 billion) in 2008. At less than 5% of the Indian travel industry, the potential for online travel seems enormous. Is there enough potential?
