India Online travel
September 19, 2006OLTA[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.
flightraja.com is a full service OTA offering all airlines
Hey Neeraj … Didnt know you had a blog …
Although I do agree that OTA are the way for the future , I wonder why OTA’s in India dotn let you print tickets online ??
I loved reading your blog. You have such great insights into everthing . i am just dying to read more and more. Please write soon. I can’t wait …
I think you are right that the speace will really get interesting once the global players come into the space. Indian players would really need to pull up their socks otherwise they will lose out on the market.
Good point baout understanding the consumer. There is very little research on how the indian consumer is ineracting on the onlien space and what are his requirments.
you need to be more regular about updating your blog
Having monitored, used and almost given up on these portals mentioned in your post, I finally did manage to book online but not without my share of problems
MakeMyTrip.Com: Wonderful, seamless experience, Got exactly what I was looking for in the place I was looking for-good usability and definitely good user experience, My only problem with the site: I did have to call Customer Service (CS) and seek clarifications due to failure of finding relevant stuff on the site itself
Moreover, Low Cost Airlines have their own *way* of functioning especially when it comes to cancellations/rescheduling. This is one place Travel agents really do help because they cut through the crap and tell what’s NOT written in the fine print
Yaatra.com: The sites slow and even on IE, its not optimized for the best experience. The keys don’t work on the drop down lists and one has to use the mouse to navigate to anywhere. The sites ultra slow and 3 times in the week, I got a message saying that the services aren’t available. That itself was a red signal to what kind of services would be on offer, especially if the payment gateway decided to play truant and I paid for a ticket twice or the auth failed or something,. Completely turned me off the site
As far as championing a cause is concerned or even backing a user and providing the “lowest cost air tickets”, I don’t find either of the sites friendly or useful enough.
MakeMyTrip won’t feature Air Deccan, assuming their agreements or not in place, hence, as a user I’m deprived of seeing potentially lowest airfare in the segment based on my assumption of the “brand” Air Deccan: the first and the cheapest carrier in India, pioneering the cause when it started out. That is a big downer.
Cleartrip/TravelGuru/Rediff don’t come anywhere close to MakeMyTrip and Yaatra.
IMHO, Indian online consumers don’t have the confidence to buy online and this may just be an assumption, but only the traffic to Customer Service may be the right indicator of the confidence or lack of it, in purchases online.
Am surprised that Ebay didn’t find mention in your post
Was wondering if there are any figures.volumes,statistics available for these sites, not in terms of poularity or number of registered users but the number of tickets booked online etc etc.Oh-then again, maybe for internal user only???
I dont agree that indian consumer do not have confidence in booking online. The largest product category for online purchases was airline tickets in the first half of 2006 with 40 percent of online shoppers indicating they had purchased tickets between January to June 2006. This was followed by “Books” (29 percent) and “Music” (24 percent).
some stats here.
http://www.ileher.com/reviews/story.php?title=Onine-ticket-sales-to-boost-Indian-airline-industry
Neeraj,
Thanks for your comments on my SaaS blog. I also have some experiences to share on the travel space. Feel free to read and comment.