Female-focused travel companies have been around for some time, at least globally. In the late 1970s, the first iterations came up that offered adventure tours like camping trips for women. In recent years, as travel has become mainstream and female spaces have moved beyond their negative stereotypes, women-only tour operators have grown strong. From remote camping trips to relaxing at luxurious resorts, these operators provide a plethora of customizable packages to suit different travelling needs.

Travel firm Wovoyage has been enabling women travellers to discover new corners of the world. We spoke to the founder Rashmi Chadha to understand what it takes to operate in this segment.

Can you tell us about yourself and what made you start Wovoyage.

I did my graduation in Journalism and Communication and my Masters in Social Entrepreneurship, but dropped out when my business plan was ready. I was not very bright in studies till 6th standard and spent most of my time playing sports like gully cricket, basketball and handball. My mom always supported me in what I like. I was so bad in studies that I had to repeat my 6th standard, so my juniors use to tease me. However, since I was good in sports, I was the first student who represented my school at nationals in two categories. That changed my life and I got tremendous support from my family and sports coach Sanjeev Sharma Sir. I also won the “Best Sportsperson Award” at school for six consecutive years. From being a dull student to becoming the school champion is what made the difference in my life back then.

While conducting a few tours as a freelancer, I researched on foreigners travelling to India, especially females. I found out that foreign female travellers really want to travel to India, but they felt insecure. Another research showed that when foreigners/expats travel to India, they want the tour to be conducted by a genuine company rather than third party travel agencies. Moreover, women travellers feel comfortable with women guides. I felt that if I can reduce the risk and provide them with a fully secure tour, then there is a business opportunity waiting to be explored. The name Wovoyage means women voyage, and they are your trusted travel buddies. I believe this name has lots of power in it.

When did the company start its operations, how big is the team?

We started our operations in August 2016. There are five operations, with 37 women guides.

The Wovoyage team

Your company claims to enhance the experience of travellers. How do you do that?

We create women-friendly customized packages and assign them expert women guides. For example, if a German lady wants to shop in Delhi, we assign her a woman guide who knows German and is an expert in shopping. We are giving foreigners a safe travel option and at the same time empowering Indian women through employment opportunities. We were mostly online in our early days, but we have now started a women-friendly travel centre in Paharganj, New Delhi. It’s a first-of-a-kind travel centre in India, and hope to change the perception of travel companies in India.

There is a huge demand for quality, secure and risk-free travel in India by foreigners and we are looking to deliver them to our clients as seamlessly as possible. We also plan for mixed groups, senior citizens and male travellers.

Who are your current customers?

Women groups, couples and senior citizens (preferably women). We assign them all a personal manager on call or email to answer every query.

What is your revenue model?

We are following the service model .There is Niche, which has packages of weekend trips around India to non-famous cultural and natural places, with special opportunities for modern sport activities and traditional experiences. They have comparatively low prices, an English guide and appeals to foreign travellers and expats in India. Then there is a unique value proposition differentiation with its convenience, including a ready package, simplicity of booking, pick up from several locations, and language guidance. The emotions that the service evokes are a feeling of adventure, fun, and having a ‘unique’ experience. We offer high-quality service for foreigners by providing them with female tour guides who speak different languages .

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

The big players are Viator and Trip Advisor, but they have just basic packages and deals and don’t do Foreign Independent Tours, which have now become important for customers. The foreign tourist arrival in 2016 has hit approximately 8 million. If we talk about travel in India, both domestic and international, it contributed 27 billion and is growing exponentially by 2x.

What is the source of your funding?

We are currently bootstrapped, with plans to see funding in the next quarter.

Which startups inspire you, within or outside the travel industry?

There is a community ‘Girls Love Travel’ and they are really inspiring the community of women travellers by sharing information about travel,stay and safety. We recently welcomed their founder in India, Haley Woods, and tried to understand how she managed to reach such a large audience of women just through social media.

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The budget hotel aggregator OYO Rooms is making a lot of news these days. New logo, new TV commercials, new media agency, new booking partners and now an exclusive brand of hotels.

OYO Rooms has launched OYO WE, a brand to cater to women travellers in our country. WE stands for Women’s Exclusive and these new hotels have got special facilities for women travellers.

According to OYO, a large number of their frequent independent travellers are women travellers and the OYO WE brand will allow them to cater these travellers better. For starters, female travellers can now book OYO WE in Gurgaon. Perhaps, OYO is not the first one in the industry to enter this category. There are other hotels that have been focusing on this area such as ITC with Eva rooms, Lemon Tree with women only wings and The Leela with special programmes for lady travellers but here OYO WE (Women exclusive) hotels are entire properties exclusive for the women travellers.

The OYO WE hotels will have features like on call cab, beauty services, automated door locks, library with women magazines, hair dryer and full length mirrors.

They have recently hired Deepika Gupta who was earlier setting up jewellery business for Amazon in India & is now building a dedicated team for this project. According to reports, there is a plan to have 15 properties under OYO WE spread across 10 cities by the end of this year. Apart from new properties, some of them will be their existing properties revamped to fit in OYO WE.

What do female travellers think about this move?

We went to some avid travel bloggers for their opinions on this move by OYO Rooms. Here is what they had to say.

Almost all of them agree that it is a smart move by OYO Rooms. While their travel stories look very fancy on their blogs and Twitter, we are sure it isn’t easy being a women traveller in India. This move by OYO gives an assurance on the safety element of stay.

TravHQ Take

The fact that there are security concerns across many cities in our country, this effort by OYO Rooms is surely going to go a long way to reassure the growing tribe of female travellers. We have often seen our colleagues call up hotel help desks for suggestions on the location of a hotel from a safety perspective. While OYO has made a superb move here, we think that the entire hotel industry need to rethink their strategy on how they will cater to the female travellers. For now, both international and domestic travellers have a fresh lease of hope

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