Anshuman Bapna is a famous personality in India’s travel startup ecosystem for all the right reasons, from the interesting things Mygola did every now and then to the quirky video announcing the acquisition by MakeMyTrip. Since the acquisition, he has been inducing startup like agility in the travel booking giant working as Chief Product Officer. A while back at the TiE Travel Marketing Summit 2016, he shared some insights from the mine of booking data MakeMyTrip has and also some learnings from the Mygola days. Here are the highlights:

Anshuman Bapna, Chief Product Office, MakeMyTrip

Don’t forget the desktop yet

There is no denying the fact that mobile is increasingly becoming the tool of choice for travellers to get inspired and even book in most cases. However, the conversions on desktop still continue to run high and that isn’t something that can be ignored. Travel is often a cross device purchase which is why the desktop continues to hold relevance and businesses should account for that.

Age divides platforms

Another interesting insight Anshuman shared was that while a very significant fraction of new users were coming to MakeMyTrip through mobile, they weren’t very loyal. The desktop users had a tendency to stick around for longer when compared to mobile users. Younger users are on mobile while relatively older ones are more biased towards desktop.

Travellers are spontaneous

The hotel category has exploded in domestic market and the online penetration has gone up significantly over the past 18 months. More travellers are planning last minute which means more than a third of hotel bookings on MMT are taking place on the same day. Anshuman shared that MakeMyTrip considered adding new tools to cater to last minute bookings only to realise that their mobile web version was already serving as one offering good conversion for same day bookings.

Sell to the right audience

MakeMyTrip has been promoting through different channels including TV commercials. On observing that large fraction of their users belong to the 18-35 year bracket with most of the new user acquisitions happening in 18-24 segment, they tweaked their marketing campaigns. Which is why they brought in younger movie stars to represent the brand in TVCs to connect better with the audience.

Experiment for quick growth

He also shared how the Mygola team used to list down sets of experiments for different marketing channels. They will then try 40-45 marketing experiments in less than a year, draw inferences, fine tune the strategies and repeat the process. According to him, content only has 30 percent contribution in getting the word out, rest is distribution and that is what one should focus on.

Marketing and technology aren’t exclusive

Recalling some of the experiments at Mygola, he emphasised that leveraging technology in marketing can produce great results. At one point, the Mygola team built a basic program to simulate conversations to help people posting travel queries on Twitter. As this picked up, they were getting more than half of the sign ups from Twitter which is a big number for a single social platform.

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Turkey is a beautiful holiday destination and earlier this year, MakeMyTrip picked Turkey as the hottest summer destination for the year. To present the destination’s unique experiences, MakeMyTrip created a unique online game that showcases the destinations through beautiful panoramas and aerial shots under the name ‘Discover Turkey’ earlier this year. The game was available through a micro-site on www.discoverturkey.in.

The game features five destinations from Turkey with a total of 15 attractions spread through 5 different levels that users have to complete. With each attraction, you will find a virtual experience. Some of them offer 360 degree views while others include virtual tours using videos. Each virtual experience is coupled with a challenge, usually in form of a simple question. The contest has been long over now but the game is still available for users to play.

Campaign strategy

The game has been primarily targeted at social media savvy millennial travellers. To play the game, you have to login using your Facebook or twitter account and share progress on social media. The questions are simple and can be easily answered with the help of the visual tour. Like we said, the objective of this campaign was to promote Turkey as a summer holiday destination and spark some inspiration among the users. MakeMyTrip was spreading the message about Discover Turkey through its social media accounts and getting the users to share the updates on their social accounts further helped in inviting users on the platform.

Promotion strategy

Apart from heavy promotions on social media, MakeMyTrip also joined hands with actress Yami Gautam for offline promotion. They used print advertising and radio ads along with digital ads to spread the word about the campaign and their association with actress. The banners on the MakeMyTrip website also helped spread awareness about the campaign. For the promotions, their marketing spends were primarily targeted towards Tier 1 cities. The contest was open for Indian residents only but was available for people from other countries as a game.

Not only did they promote the campaign using various medium but also set up various on-ground activities at popular shopping malls. This helped them reach people who use social media but aren’t very active.

Our take

We must say the campaign was executed very well by the team at KRDS, the agency behind this campaign. Their team flew to Turkey to get the content for the campaigns, shoot aerial videos, capture 360 degree panoramas and actually understand the whole idea behind Discover Turkey. The website looks quite good and, with interactive maps and impressive interface, enhances the image of MakeMyTrip as an innovative brand in the digital space. The campaign managed to attract over 19,000 visitors with over 1,000 visitors completing all 15 levels.

MakeMyTrip has undergone some major changes this year including a new branding message. Apart from the new branding message ‘Dil toh roaming hai’, they have added new features like ‘Uncancel’, hosted campaigns with popular travel bloggers and invested in promising travel startups. They have also acquired MyGola, a last minute booking service. Sources suggest that a tie-up with Flipkart is also in the pipeline to further strengthen MakeMyTrip’s presence in the online booking space.

This campaign is a classic demonstration of how neat execution and a different approach can do wonders to your campaign. Have you seen Discover Turkey yet? Check out their website and let us know whether it inspires you to travel to Turkey.

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In a bid to bite a bigger share in the fast growing travel market, MakeMyTrip has undergone some major changes in the past few months. They added new features like uncancel, introduced new brand tagline, joined hands with travel bloggers, invested in startups and hosted contests. The recent acquisition of MyGola is a piece in the larger picture MakeMyTrip is trying to paint.

After floating around in different flavours over the years, the last minute booking service MyGola has been acquired by the Indian OTA MakeMyTrip. The company started as a platform for travellers to get their questions about destinations and travel expenses answered by experts. Then they scaled up their services and started offering travel itineraries based on expert opinions. After this they pivoted into an app which would allow users to find and book ‘to-dos’ based on their taste.

With its current model, MyGola gets a good number of conversions and handsome margins on the transactions. They moved away from the earlier models to increase conversion rate. Initially their users were using the platform for researching but not for booking. Now however a large number of users book through the app. Anshuman Bapna, co-founder of MyGola says that the last minute travel planning space is easy to monetize due to the sense of urgency of users.

Before being acquired by MakeMyTrip, MyGola secured USD 1 million from 500 Startups founder Dave McClure and few other investors. Later it raised another USD 1.5 million in Series A funding led by Helion Venture Partners. MakeMyTrip hasn’t disclosed details of the deal. The MyGola team will now continue as a part of MakeMyTrip.

MakeMyTrip recently has been undergoing multiple changes this year

MakeMyTrip functions in a space where it has to fight many other OTAs and it operates on high volumes and slim margins (around 8 percent). On top of that, price competitiveness curbs brand loyalty in the space where MakeMyTrip is fighting. MyGola on the other hand, charges 5-10 percent from tourist attractions or service providers on bookings through their app and another 5 percent from users. Their model is more profitable and can generate very good revenues on scaling up even further.

But that wouldn’t have been the primary objective behind the move. MyGola has an expertise in the mobile technology space and their product showcases it well. The algorithms take care of all factors like open/close hours, personal interests and transport options to yield the perfect results. We all know the industry is shifting towards mobile and the skills of MyGola team would surely come in handy for MakeMyTrip. Rajesh Magow, co-founder and CEO, MakeMyTrip India said, “The MyGola team’s deep understanding of travellers’ planning and in-destination experience preferences will be valuable in strengthening our proposition”

MyGola shared this hilarious video of their journey so far. It surely is worth a watch.

Other travel brands are also bringing mobile technology experts onboard. HolidayIQ recently acquired SourceN to beef up mobile offerings. What is your opinion about MakeMyTrip’s move?

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