Comments on: India Online travel

By: sandrar

sandrar — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 13:46:05 +0000

Hi! I was surfing and found your blog post… nice! I love your blog. Cheers! Sandra. R.

By: Sanjoy Sanyal

Sanjoy Sanyal — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 13:35:16 +0000

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.

By: Vivek Garg

Vivek Garg — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 00:24:53 +0000

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

By: Monica Jasuja

Monica Jasuja — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 05:24:27 +0000

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???

By: yours truly

yours truly — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 03:55:45 +0000

you need to be more regular about updating your blog

By: zazang

zazang — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 04:07:18 +0000

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.

By: shashank

shashank — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 04:05:42 +0000

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.

By: yelo

yelo — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 03:40:43 +0000

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 …

By: Ford Prefect

Ford Prefect — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 06:17:26 +0000

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 ??

By: Vinay Gupta

Vinay Gupta — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 15:09:48 +0000

flightraja.com is a full service OTA offering all airlines