Last month’s OTM Forum 2019 highlighted the rise of experiential travel with a panel which was moderated by Nisha B., Founder – Elevated Consultancy Singapore. The co-panellists included Vijay Nair, Country Head – National Geographic Expeditions Aditya Bhat, Head – Jio Studios and Vikram Ahuja, Founder – Byond Travel.

Jio Studios has been doing active work within the travel industry among other sectors. Their dedicated travel team caters to 360 VR solutions in 25 countries working with mainstream travel companies like Cox & Kings, Thomas Cook as well as Incredible India as clients.

Nisha initiated the discussion with by emphasizing that Travel, in essence, is experiential, authentic experiences cannot be created. The people who are using the buzzword are faking it, using it as marketing product. Vikram also acknowledged that experiential travel is the most overused term in the travel industry these days, It is commonly juggled with transformational and immersive travel. At the heart of Byond Travel’s strategy has been the idea of building communities of travel, shared interests working with locals.

For Vijay Nair, 3 fundamental drivers according to driving experiential travel are:
– Evolving consumer – People looking at travel as the next social currency. NatGeo categorizes customer base from traveller to tourist to explorer and works with a team of experts in exploring, naturalists etc.
– Developing ecosystem – MOT had declared 2018 as the year of Adventure Tourism. Schools are now looking at experiential educational trips, looking at NASA etc.
– Technology advancements – AR/VR, small boutique agencies building to cater to these experiences.

People are looking at consuming products of brands which stand for purpose example single use of plastic, responsible tourism etc.

Watch the full panel discussion below:

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One of the highlights of OTM forum was the panel on Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality with Vikram Ahuja, Founder Byond Travel and Aditya Bhatt, Head, Jio studio.

Byond Travel started with the idea of shooting better videos, later they stumbled upon a 360 camera which they gave it to their travellers and create narrative experiences including their events. Byond Travel has been a part of Facebook’s first AR/VR global accelerator, has worked exclusively with Google on the tango platform and works with tourism boards today to train travel agents. Byond Travel had also recently worked with Karnataka Tourism at last year’s WTM which included AR project on clicking selfie with tigers.

You need professionals to ensure there are no stitch lines in a 360-degree video. With time your cameras are growing each month and evolving with technology. Contrary to the perception entry barrier to 360 videos is not high. The biggest hurdle for virtual reality is hardware, which should change in time and awareness problem in understanding where/how it could be used.

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GoFro, the online travel marketplace targeted at providing leisure travellers with travel packages, has partnered with multiple leading travel industry players. With the new partnerships, GoFro is looking to offer a wider array of products which the buyers can browse and choose from, without having to skip through multiple websites or apps. The partners include companies like Thomas Cook, Yatra, MakeMyTrip, Paras Holidays, Contiki, Byond Travel, Flamingo Transworld Pvt. Ltd., Guidelines Travels and many more. Being associated with all leading tour operators, GoFro aims to become the one stop destination for anyone looking for a travel package.

This move will not only help the customers make a more informed decision but also open up a new channel for the partners. Some of the partners are limited in their online reach or their geographical popularity and the association could enable them to reach newer set of customers.

Speaking on the announcement, Mr. Amitabh Misra, Founder, GoFro said, “It is another big step by GoFro to become India’s first and largest travel marketplace. It will change the whole ecosystem which is currently very fragmented. Now the power lies in the hands of the consumer, they don’t have to spend lot of time visiting different websites and travel agents, they can simply visit GoFro, compare packages by all the travel agents. Booking a travel package will be as simple as booking a flight ticket from any flight aggregator. It will also help travel companies to understand the consumer in competitive markets and offer best deals to acquire new customers.”

One of Travel partners, Vikram Ahuja, Founder & CEO, Byond Travel “GoFro has drastically simplified the customer purchase process and at Byond Travel we are very excited to partner with them to help reach our potential customers with exactly the kind of information they need in the most convenient manner”

Started in June 2016, GoFro has been gaining momentum quickly. Starting with a handful of destinations, it currently offers travel packages for over 70 destinations from over 200 tour operators. The parent company of GoFro, Bonavita Technologies Private Limited is backed by MakeMyTrip. More details at GoFro.com.

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India is witnessing a sudden boom in travel startups for the past few years. A few contributory factors can be the wide availability of internet, smartphone penetration and, more importantly, the exponentially growing number of inbound and outbound travellers. We learn about new travel startups everyday and some of them really push the envelope of innovation.

To identify and support such innovations, we announced our Startup Knockdown series of events recently. The first event in the series will be hosted in Mumbai next month in association with OTM Mumbai and the second event will be hosted in New Delhi in association with FICCI and Amadeus. Not only will the startups get to showcase their product in front of leading industry professionals but will also have other opportunities to give their business a boost.

While we hunt for the next Uber or Airbnb, check out some travel startups that have been making news in India:

#1 Tripoto

Founded by Anirudh Gupta and Michael Lyngdog in 2013, Tripoto offers travel itineraries for travellers and holiday makers. It has a huge collection of photos, reviews and recommendations shared by travellers who have explored the different corners of the world and are ready to communicate their travel experiences with others. Also, users have the liberty to add attractive trips in their wishlist.

Language: English

#2 iTraveller

Launched by Shiju Radhakrishnan in 2012, iTraveller provides 3,50,000+ trips for 450+ destinations at highly competitive rates compared to other online travel booking sites. It offers packages at extremely cheap rates simply because of very few intermediates. It allows travellers to discover, plan and book tickets instantly by connecting them with the native destinations suppliers.

Language: English

#3 goMowgli

Founded by Sunil Abhilash, Anil Alur, and Karan Cariappa in 2013, goMowgli claims to be India’s first hop-on and hop-off bus for travellers. Through this service, travellers can engage in innumerable activities, stay wherever they want with absolute freedom. The interesting feature of goMowgli is that the bus passes it offers is valid till 60 days from the date of first travel. This allows travellers to make changes in their travel itineraries at the last minute with no complications.

Language: English, German, French, Spanish

#4 SeekSherpa

Launched by Dhruv Raj Gupta and Sukhmani Singh in 2014, SeekSherpa lets travellers feel as comfortable as locals in destinations. Its platform allows locals to post their experiences. Travellers can easily book their experiences and post travel-related questions directing them to locals of their choice. Also, the website features many categories such as shopping, photograph and nightlife tours.

Language: English

#5 Guiddoo

Founded by Vineet Budki, Nidhi Varma, Darshan Sharma and Prashant Choudhary in 2013, Guiddoo is one-stop shop for travellers willing to indulge in tours, activities, audio-visual travelling, restaurants, spas and shopping. Its mobile app helps the users to enrich their travel experiences. Also, the app allows users to take pictures of point of interests and share it on their social channels.

Language: English

#6 Routofy

Launched by IIT graduates Abhishek Aggarwal and Ronak Gupta last year, Routofy is quite different from other online travel portals. It can search for flights, trains and buses all at once between any two destinations. Direct and indirect connections at cheap rates are displayed to the users from the favourite providers. This unique portal has already received great response from the Indian travel industry and was financially backed last year by the founders of Snapdeal.

Language: English

#7 Nearify

Founded by Mayank Kumar, Saurav Singh and Vivek Srivastava in 2012, Nearify is an event discovery platform that can be used by the travellers in their favourite destinations. It accumulates information of concerts, music festivals, parties, workshops, shows and meet-ups and categorises them according to traveller’s current location, genre of entertainment etc.

Language: English

#8 PressPlay

Launched by two friends Anand Sinha and George Abraham in 2013, PressPlay offers travel entertainment service to tourers. Interested travellers can stream or download movies, music for free under 2 minutes when connected to its hotspot. In buses, the company provides its app on fully-charged tablets for INR 100. Travellers can do away with the boredom they usually experience while travelling anywhere.

Language: English

#9 Byond Travel

Founded by Vikram Ahuja last year, Byond Travel offers 100+ unforgettable travel experiences from 40+ countries. It provides wildlife adventures, houseboat explorations, treks to Himalayas, deep-sea diving in Sri Lanka and many other activities guided by travel adventurers and experts. Byond Travel packages range from Rs. 50,000 to Rs. 1.5 lakh. It has a remarkable collection of travel experiences in its Lime Diaries collective.

Language: English

#10 Padhaaro

Founded by Ish Jindal in 2012, Padhaaro is an on-demand marketplace that connects foreign travellers with Indian locals. It assists travellers right from the time they plan their trips to the time they arrive at the destination. They can book tours and local experiences through it while being on-the-go. This startup believes in improving India’s image in the eyes of the international travellers.

Language: English

Are you a travel startup looking to leave a mark?

If you have an amazing product for the travel industry, don’t miss the chance to showcase at the Startup Knockdown events. Send your pitch deck to editor@travhq.com. Follow the links for more details- Startup Knockdown Mumbai | Startup Knockdown Delhi.

For any queries, drop us a mail at the above email ID or reach us through our social media accounts Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn.

The post Our pick of India’s 10 coolest travel startups that stole the limelight appeared first on TravHQ.

What happens when you bring experts from different walks of life under one roof and ask them to share their inspiring travel stories in-front of a sellout crowd? What you do get is #LimeDiaries, a refreshing new initiative by Byond Travel, an experiential travel company that helps in planning unforgettable vacations and experiences.

We believe that young travel startup Byond Travel is spot on with #LimeDiaries, a unique travel storytelling initiative and has picked-up something that some of the biggest travel brands in India haven’t identified yet. We believe that travellers in India have evolved beyond those traditional, in-your-face marketing campaigns and that is where Byond Travel seems to have hit the sweet spot.

People love listening to real, authentic stories from those who have been there & done that! Travel is no different and to experience something new & completely unheard, you would like to hear stories of inspiring journeys such as the Trip to the North Pole by Suhel Seth or a hitchhiker’s experience of a bus journey in Laos.

The third edition of this storytelling series is taking place on 18th July, 2015 at The Humming Tree, Bangalore, a concept Live Music and Arts Venue. While the entry to the event is FREE, the bad news is that all the tickets are sold-out by the time you read this piece. Fortunately, the YouTube Channel of Byond Travel has hosted all the videos from the earlier editions, so you won’t miss out on the fun if you are not lucky enough to watch it live.

Here are a couple of videos from the earlier editions of #LimeDiaries that caught our attention.

and we loved what Suhel says in this video

Travel is about experiencing the unexperienced, meeting interesting people and taking challenges that test not just the body but your mind.

Here’s another one from the series by Deepthi Chandramowli and this is about her bus journey of a different kind in Laos.

It would be interesting to see how #LimeDiaries goes forward from here. There are plans of a Gurgaon edition in the offing and we would love to see more people talking about it online. While at TravHQ we advocating the concept of digital travel and how brands can trigger online conversations, such storytelling ideas happen to draw fans from both sides of the world closer to each other.

The post How Byond Travel is Re-defining the Art of Travel Storytelling appeared first on TravHQ.