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.

The world of travel has progressed significantly, and the past 365 days have undoubtedly been huge for the industry. The domain has been awash with innovative technologies, path-breaking tourism policies, hybrid solutions, some social-media controversies, and much more. Mobile has had a great impact on bringing these changes to the fore and affecting the behaviour of today’s connected traveller.

So, on this rundown, we’ve pulled together a list of trends from experts across travel and tourism on how we will be seeing travel in 2018. While some of these trends have just begun to rise, some are practically around the next corner.

#1. China and India will dominate the startup domain – Chetan Kapoor, Research Analyst, Phocuswright, Asia Pacific

“China and India will remain the bigger attractions of the APAC startup universe in 2018 and beyond, but more startups will emerge to tackle local nuances in other parts of the region. These won’t be the most sexy, consumer-facing brands but those focused on the more complex and under-served aspects such as corporate travel, packaging, traveler intelligence solutions, travel experiences and cruise travel. With aggregation and distribution still being the focal point for various segments across markets, we may see hybrid solutions (artificial + human intelligence) accelerate these processes in the near-term than fully automated ones.”

#2. Online travel is set to become more competitive – Valentin Dombrovsky, CEO, Travelabs

Image source: Travel Massive

“I don’t want to go for ‘usual suspects’ and claim that AI, blockchain, VR or whatever else will bring ‘revolution’ into travel tech in 2018. When we talk about change, we need to see what leads to this change. Few things that happened in 2017 might mean a lot for 2018 (and upcoming years). Airbnb brought up lots of news this year – it changed some of its top managers and claims to end 2017 with profits. This is a major milestone for the whole industry as its main ‘unicorn’ turns out to be real business (if there were some people who didn’t believe that, now they should). Airbnb IPO will probably happen in 2019 and it means that we’ll have lots of people with travel tech experience who might get resources for investment in some of the disruptive startups. I’d say that our industry is ‘hungry’ for the events like that.

The launch of Airbnb experiences has also brought attention to tours and activities sector and investments in such startups as Getyourguide, Klook, Musement, Tiqets, Tourradar have summed up to approximately $200 mln. It’s great to see that my favourite part of travel tech industry has become ‘hot’ again and I believe we’ll see some exciting developments there in 2018.

This year there were also lots of talks about B2B startups and ‘plumbing’ which they make for the industry. We all know that travel tech has lots of parts where old legacy systems are in place. In tours and activities sector, on the other hand, lots of suppliers didn’t use any technology at all. Situation changes now at least on the development markets and B2B travel technology companies bring efficiency to travel suppliers enabling easier online distribution as well.

Travel suppliers will also try to catch up with online companies in terms of distribution and online travel ‘competition’ becomes more and more intense. With Google paying more and more attention to the industry some interesting things might happen in 2018 too. Lastly, the ‘Big Game’ of major OTAs might see some interesting moves on the market due to CEO changes at Expedia and Priceline, and their claims that their major growth should be on the emerging markets. At the same time Chinese OTAs (especially CTrip) don’t want to stay in China and see themselves as global companies. So, in 2018 we should see some interesting competitive moves from online travel juggernauts.”

#3. Virtual assistants will rule the roost- Winnie Tan, CEO and Founder, TripZilla.com

“The tech revolution continues in travel with startups leading the charge. A trend that will disrupt the travel startup industry even more fiercely in the coming year is the increasing use of virtual assistants such as Siri, Alexa, Cortana and Google Assistant. We will be seeing the rise of virtual travel concierge/chatbots, powered by AI, which can give recommendations for things to do, where to eat, help with ride-hailing as well as ticketing/bookings.

Personally, I have not seen any killer idea for use of blockchain technology in travel, yet. But seeing how the term is fast becoming a startup buzzword in every industry, we will definitely see our fair share of blockchain-for-travel startups. At the minimal level, the rise of ICOs (Initial Coin Offering) will disrupt the way startups raise money. Travel startups will also need to consider how foreign exchange and payments will be disrupted by the widespread adoption and use of cryptocurrencies and smart contracts.”

#4. Technological advancements will lead to more acquisitions – Matt Zito, Managing Partner, Travel Startups Incubator, LLC

“Two trends we see in 2018 are a renewed interest by VCs in USA and larger corporate companies like Facebook to invest in travel technology in India, and second, a move by larger global travel companies to start acquiring smaller startups as the pace of technology advancements will force acquisitions of new technologies and teams to stay ahead of their competition.”

#5. Indian travellers will embrace connected technologies – Sesh Seshadri, General Manager, Lonely Planet India

“Our daily life is changing. With IOT integrating into our lives it is changing even more. I recently had the opportunity to engage with Amazon Alexa and Google Home. These technologies offer significant value when it comes to how we travel and help us plan quicker, a great opportunity for the differently-able people. Enthusiasm for connected technologies varies from country to country. We should see the growth of this enthusiasm among Indian travellers in 2018. Virtual Reality is moving into the mainstream travel brands and significant investments are being made in this space.”

#6. OTAs will need disruptive solutions in 2018- Sanjiv Agarwal, Founder, Chairman & CEO, Fairfest Media

“Globally, and especially in Europe there is a trend of competition law authorities intervening in the OTA business. Increasingly, rate parity and MFN-type agreements are suspect. This is an interesting trend that may need disruptive solutions.”

#7. 2018 is going to be all about Blockchain – Bart Bellers, Founding Partner, Xpdite Ventures

“Disrupting an industry doesn’t happen overnight, so probably 2018 will still be fine for the majority of industry players. However, the seeds for disruption have already been planted and the disruptor of any transaction-based industry will be Blockchain. Travel is no exception. And sure, the speed and performance is not up to par with the requirements of our industry. But rather than a problem, it is a blessing. If we have learned anything from the past, underperformance of a new technology is a key warning signal for disruption. Because it is so slow and not performing, incumbents will underestimate the power until it is too late to adapt. A textbook example of disruption. 2018 will be the year that the seeds will come out and the first real use cases will take shape that will change our industry forever. That’s why I am so excited to be at the forefront with Xpdite Ventures and help those startups become better companies.”

The post 7 Trends that will change the game of Travel in 2018 appeared first on TravHQ.