One organization that has been tirelessly working on bringing together the unorganised and fragmented homestay segment and increasing focus on this space, is Stay On Skill. The company that tries to find a way to let you travel more while minimising the hit on your credit card, is now launching India’s first marketing accelerator that will help homestays skyrocket their customer base, revenue and brand value in an intensive three-month programme.

Each month Stay On Skill will send three selected travel influencers to a homestay, where they will experience the offerings of the property and promote it on their respective social media channels. Additionally, every month there’ll be Masterclasses by experts on different topics to help them grow their business. From customized marketing strategies, to analysis of online presence, Stay on Skill will ensure that by the end of these three months, the properties would have not only increased their reach but also understood the nitty-gritty of marketing themselves better.

TravHQ spoke to Arjun Tuli, founder of Stay On Skill, about the programme and the company’s plans of giving homestays across India a much-needed social boost.

1. What was the trigger behind launching an accelerator programme?

Stay On Skill in the last one year has helped numerous commercial properties in different aspects. Duing all of this one thing that we have realised it – hotels and homestays in India are popping up like wild mushrooms. In the city of Ooty itself there are more than 2000 hotels (and these are just the ones that are listed online). Across India, more than 1,75,000 properties are taking online bookings. Amid all of this, the problem is – how do you make people know that you exist? Listing on platforms like Airbnb or Booking.com doesn’t ensure you visibility or bookings. If your property shows up on the second page of Airbnb, you might as well forget that prospective customers will get to know about you. One good way to stand out from the crowd is to create a brand for yourself digitally – through social media, blogging, and video creation. But unfortunately, most homestays or hotels are not much aware of to how to go about it. Our analysis show that many of them in the past have been cheated by fake bloggers and instagram influencers, who either don’t have authentic following or high traffic.

So, at Stay On Skill, we decided to make these things transparent for properties and provide them some real value. The idea behind the accelerator is to help the deserving properties get the visibility they deserve, and the complete three-month program is designed around that. We won’t only be sending curated travel influencers to their property, but also teaching them how to make more revenue through different digital marketing techniques, and how to perform well on booking portals.

2. What according to you are the benefits of having such accelerator programmes in place in the travel industry?

On a broader scale benefits would include –
1) Properties gain visibility.
2) They get access to star influencers who have the ability to make their property go viral.
3) They get access to Masterclasses on different aspects of Social Media, Digital Marketing, Web Booking, so that after the accelerator they can take forward the learnings and start executing it themselves.
4) Build a brand value – when some good influencers get associated with your property, it creates a great brand value for you. (Unfortunately, most properties don’t know how to capitalise on that)
5) Increased brand value and visibility leading to increase in revenue.

3. What are the long-term gains that you see arising from this programme?

In these three months, Stay On Skill will provide the properties a great exposure in terms of visibility and brand value. Although visibility is short lived, brand value is not. If the properties can cash in on this brand value, it will have a long term effect on the kind of customers they attract.

The properties also gain immense knowledge from the Masterclasses. Each Masterclass is designed to provide specific insights to the property owners, that they can use to enrich the experience of their customers, and thereby increase their revenue. The knowledge from these won’t run out with time. If you execute it, you are bound to gain and add a lasting value to your business.

4. Big brands like Expedia and Marriott have already conducted accelerator programmes for their listed hotels, or improving customer experience. Is yours the first-of-its-kind offering for homestays?

If you go through the accelerator program by Expedia, it was aimed at moving hotels higher up in ranking on their own portal by giving an additional 10% cut in the bookings.
There was no addition to the property in terms of brand value, digital exposure or knowledge.

Stay On Skill accelerator is built around a completely different value addition. We are highly selective in the properties that we chose for the accelerator. We have limited them to just 10. The idea is provide them the maximum benefit through exposure and sharing our learning of this industry.

The Stay On Skill accelerator is not just limited to homestays. It’s open to hotels as well, as long as they fulfill our acceptance criteria – there should be something unique about the property – which we analyse basis the different parameters of stay, lodging, food, culture and experience.

5. How is homestay marketing expanding and evolving, particularly in India?

The homestay market in India is expanding at a faster rate than it ever was, especially in the areas of Himachal, Uttarakhand – where the locals are now realising the potential that tourism holds. For locals, getting into the tourism industry also means that you are not investing your time in doing activities like drugs, and tourism has helped a lot in that perspective – giving employment to many.

6. Isn’t there a fear that if the properties don’t get conversions in terms of revenue, despite the huge reach that you are promising, they may come back to you disappointed?

Not really. What Stay On Skill is really good at is providing the properties with immense visibility at a very low cost of investment. Thereby, helping them build a brand and name for themselves in the industry. Along with this, we equip the properties with knowledge required to convert the leads into customers. But if after this conversion doesn’t happen, then it means there’s some other aspect of the property that is lacking, which we need to identify and help overcome – which we shall do.

And this particular batch of the Stay On Skill accelerator is Not For Profit . All that we’ll be receiving from the properties will go towards payment of the bloggers, influencers, graphic designers and social media experts – we won’t be making a profit of a single penny from it.

7. What are Stay On Skill’s future plans regarding this programme?

We started the Stay On Skill accelerator as medium to share our knowledge and expertise with the properties and help them benefit from it. If we are able to make it happen at a small scale of 10 properties, next time around we’ll try to make an effort to reach a wider audience and help more properties benefit from it.

The application for the first batch closes on August 31. If you are a homestay or a hotel looking to increase your digital presence, apply here – http://stayonskill.com/accelerator.html.

The post Stay On Skill launches India’s first marketing accelerator for homestays appeared first on TravHQ.

Hotel Technology is one of the fastest growing segments in the hospitality industry. The development of affordable applications that make advanced technology accessible at scale, rather than it being the prerogative of luxury hotels is another important development. Aiding this change is AxisRooms, a technology-based channel management system that helps hoteliers improve their distribution, both for online and offline channels. Whether it is getting adequate exposure for the property or allocating the correct price for rooms in time, AxisRooms’s single dashboard gives hoteliers a seamless experience in inventory management.

Using this, hotels have a better visibility of the demand and are able to serve guests better. Currently, it has 6500+ hotels on its platform spread across 20+ countries including brands like CGH Earth, Leisure Hotels, OYO Rooms, FabHotels, Keys Hotels, Park Regis, ITC WelcomeHeritage, and more. It is backed by Seedfund, India’s leading early-stage venture capital fund.

Here are some excerpts of an interaction with Anil Kumar Prasanna, Co-founder & CEO, AxisRooms.

1.Can you tell me something about the history of company?

We started out in 2011, February. We understood the complexity behind the whole inventory allocation system, which is mostly like a quota-kind of system; not good for business in the long term. So, we thought why not build a platform like this that would overcome the difficulty of managing inventory, provide real-time availability, dynamic pricing, and help hotels optimize revenue management. We wanted to change the way the hotels are working currently.

2. How many people started this and how big is the team now?

We started with three people and now we’re more than 50 people in the organization.

3. What is driving this market – channel and revenue management, and hotel property management?

Our success has been the channel management system and the revenue management system. You do have a couple of other platforms of course, but most preferable-to-use platforms are these two.

4. How often do you feel the need to upgrade or innovate technology and how do you do it?

It’s constant. We need to keep working on new things. We have to keep innovating because you know things are changing, technologies are changing, competitors are changing their technologies. Today, our training management systems help hotels in so many ways. For instance, I can probably handle 300 different types of customers, but my hotels can’t handle, so I have to make a training system for that, and we have to constantly update our platforms. We need more and more data to achieve this and new algorithms might be a factor for everything.

5. Do independent hotel also come to you?

My biggest customer base, is in fact, independent hotels across India. We also work for chains across Sri Lanka, Dubai, Thailand. We also have big partners in Sri Lanka and Bhutan.

6. What according to you are the best practices to manage hotel distribution channels?

I think the simple thing that a lot of people don’t do, especially from the Indian market perspective, is that they don’t open their inventory fully. And second thing is they are very short on plans. They don’t plan ahead. If you look at international markets, they plan for the coming year also, so there is no pressure later. These are the basic things that a lot of hotels should keep in mind. Holding back inventory impacts the business.

7. Why do you think that happens?

In India, October to March is peak season, and then monsoon is considered off season. However, dynamics have changed. Airlines take you everywhere, there are so many airports, the way people travel has changed. But old-school hotel managers are not changing the way they work.

8. Do you sort of counsel these hotels who work on an old legacy system?

Very much. Today in fact systems are so fragmented. Large partners, like 5-star hotels are also fragmented. They do have multiple systems, but they do not work in an integrated way. The systems are broken.

The post AxisRooms is making revenue management seamless for hotels : Anil K Prasanna, Co-founder and CEO appeared first on TravHQ.

Volunteer tourism, gap-year travel, exchange programs, are all emerging as some of the top travel trends among the Millennial group. This trend has come about partly through initiatives by large-scale, well established organisations, where people work towards changing systems or providing support for vulnerable sections of the society.

Today, there are thousands of volunteer organizations with volunteering opportunities worldwide, making this a more than $173 billion dollar industry. Joining the right organizations can make the experience of giving back to the society memorable, where they only charge you for your accommodation and meals, and travellers can simply go ahead and volunteer.

Banking on this growing trend, Go Discover Abroad is attempting to redefine international travel experiences. The first-ever travel company in India that provides gap-year opportunities to people from across the world, GDA lets you travel to faraway lands and contribute towards social change through volunteering and internships, while also exploring hidden gems.

TravHQ spoke to Saurabh Sabharwal, co-founder of Go Discover Abroad, about the prospects of this tourism segment and how the company plans to leverage it.

1. Can you tell us about yourself and how Go Discover Abroad was started?

Passionate about knowing the unknown and having the zeal to explore different parts of the world, I’ve covered more than 50 countries in the last decade. Been an avid traveler all my life, I’ve been researching on how to make holidays more meaningful and full of learning rather than just chilling. Since 2007, I’ve been running Volunteering Solutions, an international volunteer placement organization offering enriching volunteering opportunities to students and backpackers from all across the world.

Of late, I started noticing the change in travel trends and realized that more and more millennials are keen to embark on journeys that are adventurous and fun-filled, as well as meaningful at the same time. Go Discover Abroad was launched a couple of months back – with the aim to sustain responsible tourism as well redefine adventure travels.

We have been quite lucky that international platforms like World for Youth Student and Educational Travel Confederation (WYSETC) and Go Abroad have already acknowledged our presence in the global scenario.

2. What exactly is youth tourism, and how are you guys facilitating it through your product?

As I mentioned earlier, it’s the people of the age group ranging between 18 to 30 years, who are more enthusiastic about sensible traveling rather than just another regular vacation doing touristy things. I would say that “youth tourism” is more about engaging young travellers who prefer to go for budget accommodation, meet other like-minded travelers, go for tours with flexible travel schedules and spend a longer time at a particular destination rather than brief holidays.

To state a data, according to UNWTO (United Nations World Tourism Organization) forecasts, 2020 will see about 300 million young people traveling in a year, accounting for $320 billion in market value.

Most of the people showing interest to travel with Go Discover Abroad are also in the same age group (mostly students and early graduates from USA, Canada, and West European Countries) showing eagerness to travel to Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia, focusing on long-term backpacking journeys. We cater to their needs and mostly try to customize as much as possible, so as to ensure that every person gets to experience something different and exclusive.

3. Who are your key competitors and how big is this market?

In India, there’s not much competition as the concept of targeting youth travellers is quite new and yet to take over. But internationally, there are certain big competitors including Gap 360, Real Gap and more. The market is pretty big, involving about 2 billion pounds.

4. Sustainability is listed as one of your core values. How much interest do you usually get for tours that have an element of responsible tourism?

There’s a pretty huge chunk of youngsters who are keen on responsible tourism. They wish to spend adequate time living close to the local communities of the host country, eager to adapt their way of life, and wanting to contribute towards the underprivileged societies in their own ways.

5. What are some of the key challenges you face in your daily operations, since this involves immense coordination across geographical locations?

To be honest, we as a team never see anything as a challenge. There’s immense coordination among the in-house as well as cross-country team members and the process of booking and hosting travellers isn’t much hassle. However, one thing that often poses a problem is the time difference. For example, while the Tour Manager is in India, a client from Australia might be seeking a confirmation from the country coordinator in Tanzania. This is something that isn’t in our hands, therefore we go slow and let everyone work at their own pace.

6. What are the top three categories of trips that users take with Go Discover Abroad?

While all our tours have got a very good response from travellers worldwide, the top 3 categories would be – Adventure Tours (including trekking, surfing, wildlife safaris etc), Volunteering and Gap Year Trips.

7. What are the top three destinations that users look for when booking a trip with you?

The top 3 destinations are Thailand, Tanzania (and Kenya as well) and South Africa. Of late, Peru has also become a very popular choice.

8. Can you tell us about the kind of traction you are getting and the size of your team?

We’ve launched just about 4 months back, and currently we have 10 people working in our Gurgaon office, as well as the country coordinators in the respective countries.

9. What are the trends you foresee in this tourism segment?

The tastes and preferences of people are changing with time, and in today’s date, when social media has so much influence in one’s life and the cost of traveling (flight fares, etc) has reduced drastically, I believe that more and more people would be keen on travelling to a new land and experience something like never before. I’m hopeful to see Go Discover Abroad flourish manifold in the days ahead.

The post How Go Discover Abroad is revolutionizing the concept of youth tourism appeared first on TravHQ.

While the digital revolution engulfs functioning of all major sectors, digitization of travel and hospitality in India has also been gaining enough momentum. This will not only help better define the future of the industry and but will also impact the evolution of the sector in the country.

TravHQ spoke to Ashish Kumar, co-chairman of the Travel and Technology Committee at FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry), and Managing Partner at Agnitio Consulting, a travel advisory firm, about the digitization of travel in India and how the overall technology inclusion among stakeholders in the industry ecosystem can be realized.

1. What is the core objective of the committee this year?

First of all, as a representative of the industry body and an association that deals with governmental issues, we saw the growth of e-commerce in India – all kind of e-commerce. Today, travel is one of the largest contributor to e-commerce growth in the country. That includes the railway ticket distribution (IRCTC), so keeping that in mind, we saw that a couple of things need to happen. The number one objective was to see that the travel industry adapts to the changing technology and to the way e-commerce and online is affecting their day-to-day working. So, we wanted to see if we could contribute in some way to ease this process and for them to adapt and transfer into the next phase of travel. The second objective is that travel e-commerce is going through a lot of challenges, both from distribution, governance and statutory perspective. So, we wanted to highlight that to the government as a body, for them to adapt it under its policies.

If you look at e-commerce today, it’s not only the growth of ticket distribution or companies that have affected the holiday industry; it is also about the incoming foreign tourists, which the government in particular is interested in increasing. Today, if Indian travellers are behaving in a particular manner when it comes to choosing their holiday to go to an overseas destination, or within the country, you can well imagine that the people outside would want to travel to any destination adopting the same practice. So, we thought that for inbound tourism to grow, India had to become an ‘Internet Bookable’ destination. The current business model is very B2B. For instance, for a tour operator in Germany, handling passengers in India, he will have to contact existing tour operators in India. In order to refine this whole distribution process, this operator in Germany should be able to search holiday destinations anywhere in the world, including in India. A traveller overseas needs to be assured that it is safe to book online, and that all contents are available online. We work closely with the Ministry of Tourism on that to give inputs on new tourism policies, for instance, for the inbound business.

2. Do you see any issue that has been holding India back from becoming an Internet Bookable destination?

Let’s start from the source market – the overseas. The Government of India today has an overseas office that markets India as a destination. The first objective for these offices is to change the way they work; their role. They still work in a manner of the time when digitization hadn’t hit the world. So, one of the biggest challenge is to adapt India to a digital market in the global domain, which the government is getting conscious about and is outlining funds for these initiatives overseas. The marketing policy needs to become more digital savvy. So should the role of the tourism officer overseas.

The second challenge is to make content available on various sites in India. It could be the department of tourism’s website or even the general tour operator’s site. You would want an equivalent of an Indian OTA internationally to be able to search for content regarding India, or a tour operator will have to set up a global website so you can search sitting in any part of the world and then construct your own holiday package. This committee is advocating that from the inbound perspective.

3. So, is there a partnership possible between OTAs and the government to cater to this?

An alliance is certainly possible, where established tour operators could put up websites from a global perspective. They also have the strength of handling passengers. I would certainly want to see investments coming in, and at FICCI our focus is on digitization. The smaller agents across the country need help to adapt to the changing distribution pattern so at FICCI, we have forums and conclaves and speakers coming in to help them. For instance, on March 21, we have a conclave where you’ll have a 1.5- hour workshop conducted by Facebook on using social media to market your holidays. Social media is obviously playing a great role in travel. We are just helping people get adapted to such techniques.

4. Could you tell us more about this conclave and its objective?

This is the third edition of the Travel and Hospitality Technology Conclave that will be held on March 21 and 22. The first day as a format is delegated to speakers in leadership positions, overseas guest lectures, and other guest speakers slots. There are four to five relevant panels, and each of the panel has five prominent people, which is followed by an informal debate. The second day is focused on travel technology startups. FICCI plays a great role in this. We guide, mentor, incubate in some manner without being commercially involved, help them showcase their ideas. We invite applications from them, they register, and we select some out of them who pitch to a group of angel investors and venture capitalists at the conclave. This year, we have also aligned with the India Angel Network (IAN) to take this travel tech startup platform to the next level. There will be three very prominent people sharing their journey of their own travel tech startups, what it takes to succeed, and what startups should learn from their experience.

5. Going forward, what will be an important play for travel startups in capturing more consumers?

If you look at the travel industry and the way the consumer is moving, there are still gaps. Technology is moving at a rapid space, with artificial intelligence, virtual reality, augmented reality coming to the fore, and the day-to-day pressure for online travel companies to put time and technology spend in keeping their business running is immense. There is a play for these startups to concentrate on these processes, but they cannot be outside the current travel ecosystem. They will need to position themselves within the ecosystem to plug these gaps, go to larger players, get into a partnership role, work with them and provide the bigger operators with the missing links, because the bigger players can’t be spreading themselves across all areas. I see a role for tech startups to provide very specific activities and services that then get aligned to the larger travel ecosystem. I don’t see any travel tech startup start today and then suddenly become a big player, but they can align themselves towards a specific activity. I would urge the travel tech startups to pay attention to the inbound space, because that for me is still an open sky, and make processes that support the existing inbound industry.

6. What are some of the big changes we can expect in the travel space this year, in terms of policies?

With the Government of India’s own policy about regional connectivity in aviation, the UDAN policy, I certainly see the underutilized air strips and regional connectivity becoming much better. The moment air connectivity becomes better, you would be able to access certain regions, which will be a big boost to the domestic travel industry. The North East for instance is badly connected, and so are some areas in Central India. If you get to access these areas decently, traffic will go up automatically. I believe almost 60 percent of all people travelling in the country travel with a religious purpose. There are many well-established tourist circuits like the Tirupati, but there are many more that are ill-connected. If you connect them properly, they will become a Tirupati in their own right. Connectivity would certainly help boost pilgrimage traffic and help domestic industry growth. This will not so much affect the inbound industry, but the upheaval will come in terms of air distribution, because today the online travel industry has grown exponentially on the back of air tickets.

The post On making India an ‘Internet Bookable’ destination, with Ashish Kumar, co-chairman of Travel and Technology Committee, FICCI appeared first on TravHQ.

Africa’s scenery, wildlife, beaches and wine have kept luring travellers to the continent for a long time now, acting as the key contributor to the tourism industry’s growth. However, business tourism is now also on the rise, with its new-found recognition as an important, untapped segment.

By targeting business travel, the number of meetings, incentives, conferences, and exhibitions, Africa is leaving no stone unturned to make sure that MICE events increase over the coming years. Recently, Africa Tourism Partners (ATP) and Grant Thornton announced that they will host the first ever Africa Masterclass in MICE in Johannesburg, from February 20-23, 2018. Themed ‘Growing destination tourist arrivals through business and events tourism leadership development’, it is a professional development programme that aims to enhance the skills of professionals and public officials in the African MICE sector.It will also focus on how tourist destinations in Africa can optimize the value of business and events tourism.

TravHQ spoke to Kwakye Donkor, chairman at ATP, about what he envisions for the MICE sector.
Business tourism has now become a key agenda in Africa. How did the transformation take place – from a leisure hotspot to a business travel hub?
Africa has always been a business tourism hub. There is, however, more hype and global awareness about business tourism now than ever. The primary reason being that both the Public and Private sector in Africa have committed to work in unison to position their tourist destinations on the continent as such, thereby increasing their investments in business tourism development. These are in the form of building more business hotels, conference centers, establishment of more convention and visitors bureau and more commitment in business tourism marketing.

How do you see this MICE masterclass helping the African tourism industry overall?
This is the first of its kind and Africa Tourism Partners and its lead Partner, Grant Thornton see it as a professional development programme for both experienced and inexperienced professionals in the industry. It also aims to sharpen skills in the industry and create a peer-to-peer knowledge-sharing opportunity. Ultimately, we wish to use this novel initiative to close the industry skills gap in order for destinations in Africa to grow their tourists arrivals through business tourism.

What are the key destinations in Africa that could potentially become/already are MICE leaders?
Almost all African destinations have the opportunity to become MICE destinations . This is because each destination is unique in its own way for meetings, incentive travel, conferences and conventions.

What are your main target markets globally?
We are inviting all African and Middle East Destinations officials /representatives, marketing directors, sales directors, CEOs of tourism authorities and CVBs, as well as all stakeholders in public and private sector to participate in the Masterclass. We also take this opportunity to invite all interested parties across the globe to attend and learn more about Africa’s MICE /business tourism sector.

The government has also taken up a number of initiatives to expand the MICE horizon in the country. Any particular initiative that you think worked the best so far?
Yes, this is true, African governments are doing their best to grow the industry as a key sector for African tourism economies and there are different approaches. Given that each destination is unique, destinations will adopt and implement initiatives that suit them best. This is a good approach as it gives way to diversity and uniqueness.

What are the challenges that you foresee in growing Africa as an important MICE destination?
The biggest challenge is the cost of air travel to most MICE destinations in Africa. This is, however, being resolved as a result of the emergence of low cost carriers.

How do you expect the segment to grow in the next 5 years?
I cannot put figures to this, however, we are very positive that this segment will continue to grow given the commitment by industry stakeholders to create more awareness about their offering, which are on par with the rest of world.

The post Africa is the new MICE choice: Kwakye Donkor, Chairman at Africa Tourism Partners appeared first on TravHQ.

MICE is largely an offline-dominated space, even the seemingly online players seem to eventually take the business offline into typical processes. How are you planning to get people/organizers/brands to shift from that behavior?

We at Trip Navigator are trying to give the industry a paradigm shift from the way MICE Planning and Execution are currently undertaken. Planning is a complex process which requires multiple interactions by clients as they select a hotel, detail a banquet, finalize an overall theme, set up and design an event, identify artists and performers, create itineraries, etc.

This turns out to be a cumbersome process where identifying and zeroing down to the final venue/vendor is the biggest challenge today. Our website is a one-stop solution to all this where we have tried to incorporate all this on the web and given them a user-friendly interface to browse through various options, all at a single source. We have several available hotels, artists and merchandising operations to choose from on our website. We also have tailor-made domestic as well as international MICE itineraries which clients can opt for.

The second most cumbersome process post planning of MICE event is execution of the event. Our mobile app is designed to answer this problem. This application is a closed group app present in both Android and iOS platforms. Once the event is finalized, we send an invite to all the delegates and they download the app and provide all the basic but critical information through it, including their meal options (Veg/Non-Veg/Jain), what kind of rooms they prefer (Smoking/Non-Smoking), etc. This app also provides a QR code which can be scanned for attendance/count of delegates at various stages like airport arrival, conference registration, sightseeing head count etc.

Our mobile app also provides an amazing platform where the hotels can push various offers (since they have a captive audience in the app) like spa services, food and beverages, and special room rate deals if the delegates decide to come back to the property with their friends or families.

Why is it that there are no clear major players in this segment (please correct me if I missed something here, limited understanding of MICE space)?

This section of the industry is still very disorganized; apart from 4 to 5 major players, all others are small sized companies. This section lacks mid-level companies. The traditional approach of being offline is still prevalent owing to the complexities of conducting transactions online. We at Trip navigator consider the challenge of complexity as an opportunity and are trying to infuse technology at the critical phases of an event – planning and execution.

What are the primary challenges?

The challenges are as mentioned below.

• Acceptability of technology at vendors’ end (Hotels, Artists, Banquet Venue, Other Event Vendors)
• Acceptability of these platform with the clients
• Finding out various mediums to communicate and conduct workshops to educate the client as well as vendor
• Since this type of platform is not present globally, there is no benchmarking possible yet

What model do you follow with your hotel partners to sell their inventory? 

Presently, we are following the traditional offline medium, where we are mapped to SalesForce of the hotel, their sales manager who reverts to our query and also gives us details of the low occupancy dates (which we can then offer as special deals to our clients) .

Once these hotels start participating in the Trip Navigator portal, they will be able to set up an alternate sales channel, where once they populate our website with rates /deals, they get acsess to our entire client base who are planning events. They don’t have to depend on us or for that matter any travel agency to get noticed by our MICE clients.

How are you cutting down turnaround times to offer price, flexibility of scale and availability details for other bits like activities?

Our platform definitely reduces the TAT by automating the process of event planning considerably. When a company decides to conduct a corporate event for its employees, it requires immense coordination between the event organizing team and the business heads. The program coordinator within the company will create an RFQ after meeting with various business heads involved to get their recommendations about different venues/locations to consider and estimate an approximate budget for the event.

This process typically starts many months prior to the actual date of the event, when the internal stakeholders are not really pressed for time and need not necessarily prioritize the task. During this stage, the program coordinator conventionally shortlists a few destination ideas and contacts multiple travel agencies to get an idea of the costs involved.

The travel agencies will then take a few days to put together an itinerary for each shortlisted destination and send the information to the coordinating team for review. During this stage of the process, the event coordinators will get overwhelmed with the amount of information coming in from several travel agencies for various destination ideas.

The next step is to discuss this information with the business heads and finalize a destination and itinerary. By this stage, the program coordinator will also receive inputs from the business on the number of employees expected to participate in the event. This will give the program coordinator a better estimate of the cost of the event.

In a typical event planning process, the coordinating team picks the vendors and performing artists quite later in the process, sometimes waiting till the last minute, once the travel and lodging costs are known. Not only is this process extremely time consuming, but it is also an inefficient way to plan an event, taking away significant time and energy from the event coordinators during the planning stage without letting them focus on their primary roles and responsibilities within the organization.

Trip Navigator aims to solve these issues by constantly updating our website with latest information about readymade domestic and international itinerary recommendations. Our website lets clients plan their budgets right from the initial consideration stage, and also offers them instant information about various vendors and performers they can compare and book right away.

Getting the estimated cost right away saves precious time and energy which would otherwise have been spent on going back and forth between business heads and travel agencies. This also helps them decide the itineraries better and negotiate an overall package for the entire event in a more efficient and cost-effective manner.

Our website makes the event planning stage a hassle-free affair, empowering program coordinators with a variety of options, cost estimates upfront as well as access to other services involved in planning an event, all at a single location.

What kind of traction is the platform getting at this point and what is the general nature and scale of your current customers? 

As we have not gone live on the website we can avoid this question if possible right now

Very brief background on founding team for story intro.

Trip Navigator was founded in Nov 2011 by Abhishek Gupta, Litesh Jethani & Gavin DCosta as a private limited company. We currently specialize in Corporate Travel & Event solutions, providing exceptional services while continuing to innovate and bring newer solutions and offerings to the world of MICE. All three of our Co-Founders and Directors come from varied backgrounds like Banking, FMCG, Media, etc., which has made it possible for us to bring us a wide variety of insight on industry best practices.

Abhishek’s dynamic, detail-oriented personality and deep subject knowledge ensures enriched customer satisfaction, and business efficiency and effectiveness. He is a Post Graduate in Business Management and has worked for almost 10 years across diverse industries.

Litesh’s on-ground event management expertise helps ensure flawless planning and execution, to the delight of every client. With over 10 years in the media industry and a Masters’ Degree in Brand Management, Litesh is extremely passionate about brand building and business enhancement.

Gavin’s love for travelling combined with overall operational and leadership expertise has helped strengthen Trip Navigator’s Operational processes, in-house teams and culture of innovation. He is a Post Graduate in Business Management (Marketing) and has worked with various Multinational Banks for almost 13 years prior to starting this venture.

The post Abhishek Gupta, Co-founder Trip Navigator talks about disruption in the MICE segment appeared first on TravHQ.

If you were following our updates, around this time last year you would recall that we had partnered with Travel Tech Conference Russia team with a goal to bridge the gap between Indian and Russian travel-tech startups. We spoke with Valentin Dombrovsky, Chief Alchemist at Travelabs to understand what’s in store for this year’s conference.

1. What are your expectations from TTCR 2017 Russia.
Travel Tech Conference Russia is going to be a unique event connecting people from various areas of travel industry and various countries around travel technology present and future! We hope to make step towards making Moscow a place to meet for travel tech pros from all over the world.

2. How is TTCR 2017 different from last year’s event.
Well, first, we’ve changed format a bit. This year we’re going to have special tracks dedicated to hotel and aviation technology – this will help us to go deeper into subjects that are more relevant for hoteliers and airline professionals.

We’ve grown in number of international speakers – they’re going to come from all over Europe and from US too!

We’ve partnered with Phocuswright for our travel startup pitch competition and are going to welcome startups from 5 European countries who will compete for the chance to win a spot at Phocuswright Europe Battleground.
We also changed venue – this time it will be better fit to welcome our guests. We hope that will help us to move toward becoming really global event.

3. You’ve mentioned that Russian travel-tech is still evolving. How do you see its growth in the coming years?
Well, I believe that Russian travel tech should explore the areas which are “hot” all over the world right now – that is artificial intellegence, opportunities provided by block chain and b2b technology. I believe, Russian market is good fit for companies striving to bring new tech to travel and making travel business more effective. That’s why I expect lots of interest to startups that are going to be on stage in the morning session – most of them represent b2b technologies for various travel verticals.

4. Globally, which are some of the travel start-ups to watch out for from Russia.
Well, you surely should watch at Skadi – that’s one of our startup pitch competition participants (it’s technically from Lithuania, but has Russian origin). I also see interesting developments in blockchain made by VChain – UK company with Russian “roots” and like what PiligrimXXI working in AR space is doing.

5. Talking about international participation, are you expecting overseas participation at this year’s event.
You know, it’s tough for us to bring international participants for various reasons:

• We’re only 2 years old and face huge competition from events all over the world;
• Political and economical situation makes it questionable whether you should travel to Moscow and try to make business in Russia;
• You need to have visa to travel here and for many that becomes an obstacle.

Nevertheless, we’re working with international partners and try to spread the word about our event everywhere (and thank you for your help with that too!). On one hand, we hope to make Russian market more attractive to those who could find new opportunities here – on other hand we want to go beyond image of “purely local” event. People don’t visit ITB in Berlin or Phocuswright Conference for instance only because they want to make business in Germany or US – they visit it to meet with people from all over the world and to see new opportunities. We want to make Travel Tech Conference Russia one of such events. Quite ambitious, but why not? I think that the progress that we made during just 2 years allows us to have big plans for the future.

6. Who are some of your partners for the event.
I’ve already mentioned Phocuswright – company which provides great opportunity for the winner of our startup pitch competition. I am proud to be Phocuswright Innovation Platform Ambassador and to see how this company makes steps towards bringing more opportunities for travel startups.

We’re also partnering with Travelport Labs and Bluesmart that provide prizes for our startup pitch competition participants.
Paris Welcome City Lab and London Traveltech Lab helped us to spread the word about event in European travel startups community.

More news about our great partners will come up soon! We thank everyone for their support to our initiative and invite readers to join (email me at valentin@travelabs.org with inquiries).

The Travel Tech Conference Russia is taking place at Moscow Technopolis Congress Centre (Moscow, Volgogradskiy prospect, 42, building 5). Here’s video from last year’s conference where our team member Tanu Arora had participated.

The post Travel Tech Conference Russia 2017 is happening soon, here is what you can expect appeared first on TravHQ.

Earlier this year, Honeywell named Neelu Khatri as the India president for its aerospace strategic business group. She brings with her strong management and leadership expertise, as well as an applied and practical awareness of the defense and aerospace sectors that she acquired being part of the pioneering group of women officers commissioned into the Indian Air Force. She served in Indian Air Force for 15 years, obtaining the rank of Wing Commander and joined Honeywell in 2014.

Her new role is significant, not only because these are interesting times for the aviation space in India, but also because she represents women in leadership roles, which serves as an encouragement to other women and goes a long way towards reducing gender inequality in organisations.

Neelu Khatri, President, Honeywell Aerospace, India (Image: Honeywell)

We got the chance to discuss with her about the aviation industry in India and the opportunities in this space. Here is an excerpt from the conversation:

What will be the key focus areas for you in the new role?

In my role as president of Honeywell Aerospace in India, I will be providing strategic direction for the India business. India has become the third largest aviation market in terms of domestic passenger traffic, surpassing Japan, so my focus is to develop and grow Honeywell’s services and products for regional air transport, business aviation, defence and space. Honeywell’s investment in the market will only continue to grow and help develop the aerospace landscape in India.

Another key focus area will be to collaborate with the government on aviation schemes such as Make in India and the regional connectivity scheme – UDAN (“Ude Desh Ka Aam Naagrik”). For this, we aim to work with businesses across the region to ensure Honeywell can expand within the market and localize products and services to best serve customers.

How significant is the Indian market as a piece of the global strategy for Honeywell?

Honeywell identifies India as a high-growth region and a key market. Customers here have very unique requirements, and we work to provide a tailored service for each them.

Honeywell Technology Solutions (HTS) is one of our technology development arms and India has HTS centers in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Madurai, helping us meet customer needs more efficiently. We are keen to continue focusing on growth in the region and will work to see how we can continue to lead industry innovation.

Additionally, we are investing heavily in the next generation of Indian aerospace engineers and pilots. Over the years, we have developed close connections with schools and universities to train young Indian engineers in aerospace and defense. Honeywell recently hosted the 4th annual design competition to provide an opportunity for students from a variety of design backgrounds (HCI, industrial design, product design, visual design, interaction design, etc.) to participate and demonstrate their problem solving and design skills for aerospace industry.

Honeywell India in collaboration with the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) have launched the National Experiential Stem Education Program for Students and Teachers, in association with Agastya International Foundation. The association also enables us to promote STEM education by motivating and supporting women globally to pursue a career in the aerospace industry.

With most carriers in India squeezed for profits, do you see any resistance to invest in newer solutions?

Today, the Indian market favours the aircraft that have comparatively more robust connectivity options and technologically advanced solutions. Hence, in spite of financial net losses, the ministry and passengers demand better in-flight services and this is urging airlines to upgrade their fleets with modern connectivity solutions. Honeywell Aerospace is enabling airlines to save money on operational costs by helping them gain a better understanding of how their aircraft performs in-flight in real time using data analytics.

Some of the newer solutions that have been adopted by Indian airlines and airports are –

Jet Airways recently adopted Honeywell’s GoDirect Fuel Efficiency software to reduce fuel use and costs for the airline. The offering provides a full range of data analysis, reporting and monitoring tools for enhanced fuel conservation. Typically, fuel consumption accounts for as much as 20 to 40 percent of an airline’s operating costs. Existing users of the software have reported fuel savings of more than 2 percent annually, which has a major impact on the airline’s overall budget.

Honeywell’s IntuVue 3D weather radar is being equipped by Air India within its international Boeing 777 fleet to get accurate weather updates in real-time.  The system has made a substantial improvement in predicting upcoming weather systems and turbulence so pilots can take the necessary steps to avoid them.

Honeywell’s SmartPath – the world’s only Ground-Based Augmentation System (GBAS) certified by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) – is currently functional at the Chennai International Airport. It has been selected by the Airports Authority of India (AAI) as part of a pilot project for satellite-based precision approach and landings at the airport. Implementation of this technology represents a proven, cost-effective and easy-to-install way to deliver immediate financial and operational returns for airlines.

Are there any challenges that are unique to the Indian market and what role is Honeywell playing to address them?

India is a very unique and an important market to Honeywell Aerospace. As an international company, understanding and meeting the needs of our customers here can sometimes be a challenge. To overcome this, the team here is focused on overcoming and pre-empting limitations in order to deliver results, as well as maintain and build relationships with key customers.

Currently, the aviation industry is demanding connectivity solutions for Indian airports as well as airlines. As Indian authorities are in talks with the aviation ministry to implement in-flight Wi-Fi, Honeywell is supportive of this initiative. Globally, passengers are receiving Wi-Fi that is 10 to 100 times faster with fewer dropped connections, and soon this technology will enter the Indian airspace. Once implemented, Honeywell Aerospace will be able to bring its international connectivity solutions to the Indian market.  Honeywell has partnered with industry leader, Inmarsat, to deliver global high-speed in-flight connectivity technology to airlines and airplane manufacturers. Honeywell’s JetWave is a satellite communications hardware which exclusively supports Inmarsat’s Ka-band service. JetWave allows pilots, passengers, operators and maintenance personnel to connect to GX Aviation, an in-flight broadband service.

While evolving your core products and services, what other areas in aviation have you identified for investing in future?

The aerospace & defence sector in India has come a long way in the product-engineering value-chain. To keep this momentum growing, Honeywell continues to invest and work with the next generation of Indian aerospace engineers and pilots. Honeywell Technology Solutions Inc., an engineering arm based in Bangalore, has developed close connections with schools and universities and is committed to training young Indian engineers in aerospace and defense. Today, Honeywell has grown from 1,000 people in 2002 to 15,000 people in multiple locations throughout India.

The future of aviation calls for connected services within the aircraft for passengers, pilots and operators.  Today, passengers just want a safe, comfortable flight with in-flight Wi-Fi and entertainment capabilities like the ones they get in the office and at home. Whereas pilots and operators want advanced technological tools that put real-time information and data at their fingertips, allowing them to focus on flying and efficiently tackle air-safety issues in the Indian airspace. Looking at this paradigm shift, Honeywell Aerospace continues to develop advanced connectivity solutions to cover all technological needs of airports, aerospace and defense.

Honeywell strongly believes in the Make in India initiative. In line with this initiative, Honeywell locally produces to boost the domestic aerospace and defence market. In association with Tata Power SED, Honeywell delivers its high performance TALIN inertial land navigator systems (INS) to the country. Our license to produce the Honeywell TPE331-5 engine is a result of our long standing partnership with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited.

Honeywell also supports the regional connectivity scheme, UDAN, launched by The Ministry of Civil Aviation to x. We feel optimistic about this innovative scheme to develop the regional aviation market, and with our existing technology and mechanical expertise, we will be able to support the government as well as other stakeholders to enter new regional markets. This will in turn provide us growth opportunities in India as well as scalable business.

Honeywell has been directing a lot of efforts towards communication technologies and IoT lately. What are some interesting outcomes that we can expect in this space going forward?

Today the Internet of Things (IoT) is top of mind for all industries, and we are making it relevant within aerospace as well. The global as well as Indian aviation industry is going through a digital shift, and Honeywell is leading the way by creating a completely Connected Aircraft.

For the past 100 years, Honeywell has been providing in-flight technology globally and has developed the expertise needed to enter this new digital era with solutions such as JetWave, GoDirect services and cockpit upgrade solutions.

In-Flight Wi-Fi – JetWave

Recently, announcements regarding in-flight Wi-Fi being introduced in India have been surfacing in the media, and the Centre is likely to permit in-flight Wi-Fi by August-end 2017. Because of passenger demand, in-flight Wi-Fi services are already available for passengers in international airlines. A recent global Honeywell survey states that in-flight Wi-Fi impacts how passengers book and prioritize their flight preferences. Honeywell Aerospace is one of the companies enabling airlines in India as well as globally to adopt in-flight Wi-Fi.

Inmarsat’s GX Aviation is powered through Honeywell’s JetWave hardware system, which provides high-speed in-flight Wi-Fi for airlines. It’s specifically designed to meet the needs of modern aircraft and passengers, and uses three Inmarsat Ka-band bandwidth satellites with spot-beam technology to give aircraft the internet speed and reliability that passengers are used to having at home or in the office. Passengers get 10-100X faster Wi-Fi with fewer dropped connections around the globe.

Leading global airlines such as Lufthansa Group, Singapore Airlines, Qatar Airways, Vietnam Airlines, Air Caraibes, Air New Zealand, Sri Lankan Airlines, Ethiopian Airlines, Norwegian Air Shuttle and Air Astana have already adopted the Jet Wave hardware for providing in-flight Wi-Fi to its passengers and pilots.

Real-Time Solutions – GoDirect

Today, pilots demand real-time solutions in the cockpit instead of the old-school paper charts. We recently launched our GoDirect suite of flight services which are available through a web portal or app store. These next-generation digital offerings provide access to an all-inclusive portfolio of aerospace services that improve flight planning, software updates, maintenance services and a variety of other tasks. GoDirect services range from fuel efficiency solutions, to online Wi-Fi access for in-flight passengers, weather information and customized avionic and mechanical expertise for airlines. In India, Jet Airways recently adopted the GoDirect Fuel Efficiency software, a part of Honeywell’s GoDirect family of Connected Aircraft technologies which is helping airlines reduce costs significantly and help regulate emissions by offering full range of data analysis, reporting and monitoring tools for enhanced fuel conservation.

Cockpit Upgrade Solutions

According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), approximately 65% of recorded aviation accidents occur during approach and landing. To counter this, Honeywell’s SmartRunway and SmartLanding software promote stabilized approaches, decreasing the risk of long landings, hard landings, tail strikes and runway excursions. These solutions increase safety, improve pilot situational awareness and lower cockpit workload across an airline’s fleet. Another advanced technology, SmartPath GBAS helps reduce delays and journey times for passengers, lowering operational costs for airlines and improving traffic management throughout at the airport.

Can you give some highlights about Honeywell Venture Fund? What kind of startups are you looking to work with through the program?

The Honeywell Venture Fund is a $100 million investment that focuses on technology startups. We are delighted to share that one of the key focus areas will be aerospace, as Honeywell’s aerospace division is a larger driver of revenue for company through the production of auxiliary power units, aircraft engines and turbochargers.

Honeywell will be looking at technologies and startups that align with our core areas of focus and are potential disruptors in the market. Honeywell hopes to enhance its core innovations, including its range of connected technologies and GoDirect services that send, receive and analyse data from an aircraft’s parts.

You can keep up with all the developments from Honeywell Aerospace here. More details about Honeywell Venture fund can be found here.

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Sharing, or rather the access economy is becoming a part of our everyday lives even without us noticing. Taking UberPOOL to work, booking a homestay on Stayzilla, renting a mountain bike at a hill station, all of these have become common practice. Our upcoming report indicates that over the past five years, the sharing space has seen the maximum investments in APAC, higher than any other industry segment. As you would expect, most of this capital has gone towards transportation solutions.

(L-R) Karan Jain, Co-founder & COO, Anupam Agarwal, Co-founder & CEO, Revv

Car rental companies form a major part of it and recently Anupam Agarwal, CEO and Co-Founder, Revv, joined us for a conversation about the same. We discussed the car rental market in India and how it is going to shape up in future. Here is an edited excerpt from the conversation:

There are multiple players in the car rental space in India. Do you see that as a challenge or is the market big enough for multiple players?

I believe that is not a challenge for us and it won’t be anytime soon. The market is much bigger than what any of us can provide at this point. India is likely to become an opportunity for 100K shared cars in 3-5 years and out of that, today there are maybe 4,000 on the road. I don’t think the industry faces the question of intense competition in the space but of how to create a supply right now in a non-linear manner. Not having to buy everything. That is the first challenge.

Next would be to create awareness. If you go out and ask random people, you will realise that a large fraction of people aren’t even aware about the availability of car-sharing options available to them. These are the two main challenges that we need to bother ourselves with right now. There is space for many players and even in long run, there will be two or three major players occupying more than half the market with the remaining being occupied by long chain of small players.

What is the nature of users currently renting on your platform?

Right now, close to 60 percent of the demand is coming from outstation travellers. The remaining usage primarily comprises of people who will be driving in the city. This fraction includes people who hire over weekends to go around with their friends and the people who rent cars at their destination during their multi day visit.

At this point, there are not a lot of people who are using our service everyday but there certainly are people using it on a weekly basis.

And what about daily commuters? Are they opting for products like Revv to work?

The response for Revv to Work has been quite good. We have committed 15-20 percent of fleet for that product and we are almost always sold out on that component. We often receive calls from customers demanding us to increase the available inventory for Revv to work. However, we can’t really commit our entire inventory toward it because then we won’t be able to offer the same level of availability for travellers looking to rent short term.

Globally car makers are actively involved in sharing businesses, either with their own spin-offs or with partner startups. How do you think Indian car makers see rental companies?

I believe Indian manufacturers are warming up to the concept and we will see some major developments soon. Practice of car ownership will fade and an alternative model will replace it. Close to two percent of Indians own cars and that is a very small fraction when compared to say 80 percent in US or even 20 percent in China. Now if we look at the urban India, if that 2 goes up to even 5, the state of our roads won’t be pretty. Increase in access to cars through ownership won’t really work well here and sharing will allow sustainable growth.

What are some conditions you think are unique to the Indian market? Do you face issues working with insurers or regulators?

The challenge with insurers isn’t something that can be addressed immediately but yes, we would like some change in future. The fact that insurance here is associated with the vehicle and not with the driver limits us in some ways. If that is not the case and common records are maintained here as well, we will be able to offer better service and personalisation on various levels. We will be able to offer better prices to someone with a better record while retaining the standard prices for someone with a bad history of driving. However it won’t be easy for the industry to rearrange itself anytime soon.

About the regulators, we would love to have some more support for a marketplace model. Currently there are licences we are supposed to acquire for individual states which is not a problem for us at all. However, when we look at a collaborative model, the licence becomes a bottleneck in allowing other commercial cars from the road to be a part of the network. The owners need to acquire the licence and have to fulfil multiple conditions and have a certain scale of fleet. There are of course security reasons behind the barriers but a middle ground has to be found. They need to open up to the idea of platforms like ours taking the responsibility for the individuals willing to share. The regulation can be made around the company generating the supply and renting out the vehicles rather than the owner to make room for a true sharing model.

Do you think the likes of Uber and Ola have helped you?

Absolutely. In a big way. They have spearheaded this revolution and now there is a whole class of youngsters who don’t want to put their money on buying a car. In my own circle, I was the last person to buy a car and was very happy living with Meru Cabs for my needs till then. Back then however, the options were limited and I eventually had to buy one for all the outstation travel that wasn’t always possible with cabs. With the options available today, I wouldn’t have done that.

What channels have you been using to drive the demand for rentals?

For us, marketing hasn’t been a real challenge. We have been growing organically with some social media marketing and word of mouth. Whenever we have added to our fleet, the utilisation has automatically surged indicating that there is a good amount of latent demand in the market. More than the demand, we need to work harder on ramping up the supply and educating more people about the product.

What next can we expect from Revv?

We started with the vision of turning the two percent ownership into a 50 percent usage. We believe that at least half of the population should be able to access a car when needed, something only a car sharing solution can help accomplish. Of course adding new geographies is going to be one part but along with that, you will see expansion of the services we are offering with entirely new products.

There is a segment of users which has given up on the idea of car ownership and their varying needs cannot be taken care of entirely by the current product. If you are in a new city for a few months, you might want to have a vehicle for the period. With our current structure, that won’t be possible. However, going forward we are looking to cater to these customers without the baggage associated with car ownership. There are few more type of customers we have in mind that would require us to add new products. We want that all your transportation needs should be taken care of between us and the likes of Uber and Ola.

Outside of your business, what are the major transitions you see coming to the ground transportation space in long term?

One is certainly going to be electric vehicles. They are already gaining momentum in some parts of the world and in future, expect the intracity transport to go entirely electric. The developments in battery technologies driven by the likes of Tesla will help this further.

Another major change I believe would be the reduction in size of vehicles. A large number of people move alone in their vehicles and eventually we will see more vehicles tailored to that. We could possibly see modular options to cater to varying needs of travellers. Third will be sharing which of course we are a part of and in long term, it will be further driven by the entry of autonomous vehicles. Instead of owning, people will choose to access the resources as needed.

You can find more details about Revv on their website www.revv.co.in.

The post Sharing is not just a trend but a necessity for our country: Anupam Agarwal, CEO, Revv appeared first on TravHQ.

We are gearing up to be a part of the Travel Tech Conference Russia. By associating with this event, we are looking to support the travel startup communities in both the regions. This would help us in working together to create a bridge for travel companies in India & the SEA region and Russia to explore cross border synergies.

Due to the undulations in the Russian travel market, many companies from the region are looking at global market and the event could very well be their gateway to the outside world. On the other hand, many travel companies, especially the B2B travel tech providers in India and neighbouring countries have the potential to cater to global audience. The event will allow them to showcase what they have to offer to the right audience and also get insights on other markets giving them an opportunity to fine tune the product for a wider audience. You can also join online by signing up for live streaming.

Before we join in the event later this month, we had a chat with Valentin Dombrovsky from Travelabs. Valentin has been actively involved in multiple communities of travel industry innovators and is behind bringing us this event in association with Travel Startups community and HQ Agency. His company Travelabs helps entrepreneurs take their first step in the travel industry by working closely with them and contributing in different ways. He shed some light on the opportunities and challenges in Russia’s travel market. Here is an edited excerpt from the conversation:

How has the travel startup ecosystem of Russia evolved when compared to the ecosystem in West?

Well, I’d say that travel startup ecosystem, and the startup ecosystem in general, had some hard times lately. It was booming since around 2010 and in 2013 we were pretty optimistic about its future. But then 2014 came and travel industry has suffered a few blows due to politically and economically unstable situation. One of the most negative outcomes was the rouble exchange rate drop (two times drop in exchange rate compared to dollar and euro). That made outbound travel too costly for most of the people (not many of them were doing it even before that honestly). Russian startups had a tendency to focus on Russian market a lot and travel was no different. However, after 2014 we saw many companies trying to build products for global markets as the opportunities on global markets have become even better than before. We’ll see some of travel startups who want to do something for global travel industry at Travel Tech Conference Russia as well.

Have there been any government initiatives to support the upcoming entrepreneurs in the region? How has the community responded to that?

To be honest, I am not following government initiatives closely. However, if we speak about travel, then I can say that recently there have been lot of conversations about the need to boost domestic and inbound tourism in Russia, but I didn’t see any specific activities targeting startups in this regards.

Also, there’s government funded fund name Internet Initiatives Development Fund (or IIDF) that runs an accelerator which claims to be the most active accelerator in Europe. They’ve funded some travel startups, but it seems to me that these turned to be not really successful investments, so they have shifted focus from travel startups (at least there were none in their latest batch).

From what we understand, the sentiments haven’t been very positive around the Russian travel market for a while. Has it caused any change in patterns for Russian travellers?

Right, as I’ve said, political and economic situation has influenced travel market a lot. First of all, there was a big shock when tours to Egypt and Turkey were banned for different reasons. These countries were most popular among Russian tourists who still prefer to buy package tours. This influenced tour operator market a lot and they started to look for opportunities in travel inside the country. No, beach destinations inside Russia (as well as Crimea which is considered to be part of Russia by our statistics bureaus) have become most popular travel destinations. The number of outbound travellers have dropped, the number of domestic travellers has increased, but not significantly. Many people who were trying to save money on travel before the crisis happened don’t really have money to travel at the moment.

How would you differentiate the online travel market in Russia and India? What are some key traits brands looking to enter Russian market should have?

That’s a great question. Honestly, I don’t know a lot about Indian travel market, but I see that it’s like Russian is still emerging in terms of online penetration. Of course, we might say about various travel customer patterns, but I think, that’s a subject for additional research.

I can say a few things about opportunities for various companies looking to enter Russian market though. First of all, we need to see current situation as a moment of opportunity. Some global companies have entered Russian market in the middle of crisis, HotelTonight and BlaBlaCar for instance, so there are still some niches to be found in the market. There are online travel agencies, hotels and tour operators that look for more effective ways to sell their inventory, so there’s some chance for B2B technology companies here.

If you’re a B2C company, you might be able to work here if you provide some new cost-effective way to travel (like BlaBlaCar did). Advertising Russia as a destination for Indian travellers and India as a destination for Russians also might be an opportunity.

What are some of the travel segments that are gaining momentum in Russia?

Recently, we’ve seen the rise of online bus ticketing companies with some of them getting pretty good traction. And there are still some opportunities here in the areas like tours and activities that are still mostly offline. Startups can explore these segments as they offer headroom for growth.

You have been hosting various events to support the travel tech community, what are some of the key observations you would like to share here?

I think that it’s quite important that back in 2012 we managed to launch Travel Startups community (and later its international version Travel Startups Intl). One of my foreign friends told that it allowed us to create sort of “intellectual atmosphere” on the market. Although it’s obvious that after such long time of online existence community needed something more to remain active – that’s why we decided to launch our events after supporting multiple industry events in the past. I believe that we’re working on exciting market of making people happy and that’s why we need to work together and exchange our experiences – that’s what I am working for.

How are you looking to help the startup community with this event?

Let me be honest – this is the event which I am doing for myself. Actually, I feel that I needed some opportunities when I was working on my own startup and that’s what I am trying to bring to startups and travel technology companies in the market. I also believe that Moscow is in great geographical position to become a “place to meet” for European and Asian travel entrepreneurs. I am trying to use the examples of best international events to do our own together with my partner Dina Salyukova and her company HQ Agency.

So, what we’re doing is creating a platform for exchanging experience – both between travel tech entrepreneurs in Russia and internationally. We’re doing 4 sessions one of which is travel startups competition with prizes from 33entrepreneurs, Travel Startups Incubator and iDealMachine. We’ll be happy to see Alexander Trieb, head of Travel Audience among one of keynote speakers – this will help us gain some knowledge from European travel market as well.

One of the most interesting parts for Indian entrepreneurs will be the panel discussion held in collaboration with TravHQ. Together with Russian travel tech thought leaders we’ll try to look at Russian and Indian travel technology markets and to understand opportunities on both of them. I hope that this will lead to building more connections between our countries – after all that’s what travel is about.

Travel tech conference Russia will be hosted on October 27 at Salut Hotel in Moscow. More details and registration options can be found here. To allow for more industry professionals to benefit from the event, the event will also be broadcasted live. You can register to watch the live broadcast of the event.

The post A sneak peek into Russia’s travel market ahead of Travel Tech Conference Russia appeared first on TravHQ.