OLTA[Online Travel Agents] space in India in heating up. Local players like makemytrip.com, indiatimes travel, yatra, travelguru and cleartrip are slugging it out. All of them ‘claim’ to offer one or more of these – the cheapest tickets, the best service or the widest range of airlines. How to differentiate oneself in this crowd? Lowest fares would have to be there – a study in the US shows that lowest fares was by far the most important thing people looked for while buying tickets online.
- Be a ‘customer champion’ strategy:
Given that the lowest fares are on offer ‘most’ of the time on ‘most’ of the sectors, OLTAs have to gear up their activity system and reach the highest level of technology and operational efficiency to differentiate themselves. Let me get more specific here. If both MMT and Yatra offer the same price on Del Mum sector, the consumer would go on one or the other depending on the ease of use of their websites. Or, if the consumer is facing a problem in booking, then the provider who offers ‘chat’ or ‘phone’ help would be preferred. These are some examples which would produce differentiation in the mind of the consumers and finally make one or the other brands stronger.
- Be a ‘travel experience’ provider
From being a provider of plain vanilla air-tickets to building travel experiences for consumers. If one could bundle the deal [tickets+hotel+car rentals] in such a way that sum total is greater than sum of the parts separately, it could provide a source of differentiation as well as better margins. The consumer would be happy to get the best deal and the provider would be able to differentiate itself from other air-tickers providers.
A twist in this whole game is the imminent entry of global giants such as expedia and travelocity. How will they change the game among local players? Are they going to partner, acquire or go on their own? It will be interesting to see how they arrive!
Another trend to watch out is the increasing popularity of metasearch engines like rediff faresearch, mobbissmo, flightraja etc. These guys lead traffic to OLTAs+Airlines and hence are important for them.
Given all this, it becomes important to understand how a customer books travel online. What are his most important needs and what makes him stick to a particular provider.
