London Stock Exchange-listed tourism company TUI has set its sight on the fast expanding Indian online travel market. It recently shut its business of distributing holiday packages and launched an online platform in early May for hotel and flight bookings and to compete with players such as MakeMyTrip and Yatra.

Having identified India, China and Brazil as future markets to gain significant share in the growing online travel bookings space, TUI Group has devised the ‘TUI 2022’ strategy. As part of this exercise, the Group’s subsidiary TUI India has been transformed to a digital provider exclusively focusing on the online business. Its website www.tui.in now allows Indian consumers to combine flight and hotel offerings within seconds. The change in approach is underpinned by the appointment of Krishan Singh as CEO of TUI India. Krishan joins TUI India from Yatra.com where he served as Senior Vice President.

With its TUI 2022 programme, the Group will achieve a fully digital market entry based on standardised, globally scalable and uniform software architecture in India, China and Brazil. By 2022, TUI Group aims to win additional turnover of EUR 1 billion and 1 million additional customers from these future markets.

TUI launched its classical tour operating business in India in 2005. The business has now been realigned to reflect India’s rapidly expanding Internet usage and significant growth of online travel bookings. In 2017 alone, revenue in the online travel booking market in India climbed by more than 30% year-on-year to USD 22.5 billion.

Alexander Linden, Director Future Markets, TUI Group, “India is one of our future markets to deliver additional growth for the TUI Group. Realigning the local business with a strong digital focus under our TUI brand offers enormous opportunities. I am happy to have Krishan and his team onboard, they will ensure business expansion and deliver future growth.”

The Indian online travel market has been seeing a rapid growth led by steep discounts and offers from market leaders such as MakeMyTrip and Yatra. While nobody else is making much money in the space, TUI is clear that it wants to have a sustainable and profitable Indian journey.

Besides selling hotels and flights, TUI will also focus on growing the flights-plus-hotels segment to short-haul destinations such as Singapore, Dubai and Mauritius.

The post TUI sets sight on India’s burgeoning online travel market appeared first on TravHQ.

Yatra.com, a leading online travel agency and travel search engine based in India, has acqui-hired Travel-Logs – a popular website for exploring and booking customised city walks and private tours.

Dhiresh Sharma, the founder of Travel-Logs, will associate with Yatra as head of its new segment called Metro X. This new feature will accumulate travel experiences across different Indian cities based on different themes like culture & heritage, art & architecture etc. It will be launched in Mumbai by the end of February and expand in other metro cities later. In 2014, Travel-Logs conducted a tour of South Mumbai for the Asia Business Council. Famous personalities like Pheroza Godrej, wife of Jamshyd Godrej, chairman of Godrej & Boyce Manufacturing Co Ltd, and Gerard Kleisterlee, global chairman of Vodafone participated in the event. Similarly, Travel-Logs has carried out innumerable successful tours for corporates and educational institutions in Mumbai. This might be one of the reasons why Metro X will be launched in this city.

According to the article, Sharat Dhall, President of Yatra.com, stated the reason behind the acqui-hire:

“It is about experiencing your own city and the idea is to curate all the experience in a metro – whether it is cycling tours, walking tours, food trail, etc – which is available within the city.”

On the other hand, Dhiresh Sharma elaborated on the experiences offered by Travel-Logs:

“People who live in the city should be able to see value in the city and this is what drives us. We try to create value out of the age-old heritage and culture, which not many people know.”

For the past few years, many travel companies are acqui-hiring others because they need certain skills and expertise as per their business requirements. Last year, ixigo acqui-hired Desi Backpacking Travelers to expand its services and HolidayIQ acqui-hired SourceN India Pvt to boost up the mobile offering.

We have seen the trend that Yatra.com is exploring new business verticals. It has already started offering homestay accommodation under the brand ‘TG stays’. Also, it provides a unique marketplace for holiday packages from offline travel operators. It can be said that by associating with different companies and specifically Travel-Logs, Yatra.com plans to offer trippers a richer experience of different cities with a wide variety of stay options and activities.

How successfully will Yatra and Travel-Logs perform together in the travel industry is yet to be seen.

Also Read: Yatra launches TG Rooms & TG Stays, but is it too late?

The post Yatra acqui-hires Travel-Logs to expand its business in cities appeared first on TravHQ.

Marking a major development, the Ministry of Tourism – Oman, has collaborated with AudioCompass thereby including Oman as a destination available to tourists on the AudioCompass app.

AudioCompass, an application available on iOS and Android, assists as an audio guide to travellers exploring tourist destinations at the global level. Through its high-quality, informative and detailed audio-based content, AudioCompass brings alive the history, culture and heritage significance of 1200 tourist destinations across the world. It reveals the closest tourist attractions to the travellers recognizing their geographical location at any given time. It can also be used offline so users won’t have to worry about data costs while travelling. AudioCompass is integrated in holiday packages available at MakeMyTrip, Yatra, Thomas Cook and Cox & Kings.

Within Oman, AudioCompass will offer audio stories for 80+ tourist destinations. The tourist destinations include: Muscat, Al Sharqiyah, Al Dakhliya, Al Batinah, Dhofar and Musandam. Exploring these tourist spots with AudioCompass will be like having a knowledgeable and local friend all the time. The app provides soothing music to enhance the wonderful travelling experience.

According to their press-release, Gautam Shewakramani, the founder of AudioCompass, quoted:

“AudioCompass in Oman is a leap forward to empowering travelers visiting the country. We are thrilled that the Ministry of Tourism has chosen to support us in bringing an authentic Omani experience to travelers via their mobile phones.”

Elaborating on this development, Lubaina Sheerazi, India representative of Ministry of Tourism, Oman, said:

“AudioCompass helps the growing breed of independent travelers from India gain deeper understanding of a culturally and historically rich and vibrant destination like Oman. People want high quality, personal and authentic experiences, and our partnership with AudioCompass helps facilitate this while improving knowledge and accessibility of Oman to travelers from India.”

AudioCompass, founded by Gautam Shewakramani in Mumbai, is the official audio-guide of Incredible India, Government of India. With the belief system of ‘every traveller deserves great stories’, AudioCompass plans to gain a stronger foothold in the travel industry.

To gain more perspective about AudioCompass and their success story over the years, read our interview with Gautam Shewakramani here.

The post Ministry of Tourism, Oman joins hands with AudioCompass to launch a mobile app appeared first on TravHQ.

In a rather predictable move, multiple OTAs have blocked the budget hotel startups from listing on their respective websites. Sources have reported that Goibibo, MakeMyTrip and Yatra have blocked them and according to industry experts,the move is clearly aimed at safeguarding the OTA market share. With the kind of response & inventory volumes players like OYO Rooms and ZO Rooms are getting with their endless deals, they are clearly posing threat to the hotel side of OTA business.

With heavy investors backing these budget hotel startups, they are taking significant burn to acquire new customers and were listing on OTAs at prices lower than original listed price of the same hotel. It is in order to acquire new customers and keep them coming back to the brand. This could have become a threat in future as these brand could be controlling a large part of the OTA inventory by adding more partner hotels as they grow.

According to a news report by Economic Times, a MakeMyTrip spokesperson has acknowledged the same and has termed it to be a part of the ongoing experiments at the company. Cleartrip still lists these hotels and hasn’t been in any news around this development. The budget hotel aggregators must have seen it coming as Goibibo earlier caused some friction in listing their properties and made the process of listing relatively cumbersome. This was before they launched their own brand of budget hotels called GoStays. Yatra also launched their own brand of budget hotels under TG Rooms. Listing the rivals would also create competition for these brands.

According to the budget hotel brands, this move by OTAs won’t have any significant impact as the OTAs have been accounting for around 10-15% of their bookings. While these numbers appear to be a little optimistic to believe, it is clear that they won’t sit back and wait. Soon after this update, ZO Rooms introduced their festive offer with some really good hotels available for INR 99 to drive more direct traffic.

OYO Rooms recently raised fresh round of $100 million and has been using these funds to actively expand its network across multiple Indian cities and claim to be present in more than 100 cities. The other big player in this space, ZO Rooms, is present in more than 50 cities.

The budget hotel segment has certainly dominated the travel industry conversations for most part of 2015. With all the offers coming your way, this is perhaps a great time to plan your trips.

The post OTAs hit back at the hotel startups, block ZO and OYO Rooms from listing appeared first on TravHQ.

After multiple quarters of reported losses, it has been reported that MakeMyTrip is likely to bear losses for another two years to come. This of course is in bid to acquire more customers. They have decided to increase the revenues from the hotel and packages business and that would require attracting more customers by offering attractive discounts. The plan is to take the hotel business to 70% of the overall revenue over the next few years.

Sources report that MakeMyTrip can be profitable even at this point but it is a conscious choice to incur more losses keeping long term goals in sight. It is important to acquire more customers for hotels and packages because the margins from airlines are slim.

For the hotel business, the rate of internet penetration sits somewhere between 10-15% of the overall internet penetration. There is an increase in the number of users who are now booking online but still there is a significant chunk of users that are relying on offline options. The discounts and offers are primarily targeted at getting those people online. The number of transactions have been going up recently but that isn’t translating into revenue growth.

With the sudden growth in number of players in the hotel space, the OTAs are threatened. They are taking aggressive measures to stay competitive in the space. Budget hotel aggregators like OYO Rooms, Zo Rooms, Treebo Hotels and Wudstay are eating up the share of bookings that OTAs would have enjoyed otherwise. Unlike standalone hotels, these chains have got strong funds to heavily market themselves and offer lucrative discounts to give a tough fight to OTAs. They are especially focussing on the low end hotel business and are gaining good traction among young travellers. They are also partnering with various brands as accommodation providers to attract more business travellers.

According to Rajesh Magow, Co-Founder and CEO, MakeMyTrip, the real competition is from other OTAs like GoIbibo and Yatra as they are also aggressively trying to undercut others in a bid to gain a bigger market share. According to sources, Ashish Kashyap, CEO of Ibibo Group earlier claimed that his firm is 2.5 times bigger than MakeMyTrip in terms of booking volumes. They are also moving into other segments like GoIbibo recently introduced GoStays while Yatra.com introduced TG Rooms and TG Stays. This is a clear indication of the strong headwinds MakeMyTrip is preparing to face. The losses of MakeMyTrip were reported to be USD 6.93 million in first quarter of FY2016 against USD 3.96 million last year and they will go up further.

Update- MakeMyTrip has announced an app only festive season sale. They are giving heavy discounts on almost all type of travel and accommodation bookings through the MakeMyTrip mobile app and deals for specific credit and debit card holders. You can download the app here.

The post MakeMyTrip planning to bear more losses in a bid to acquire customers appeared first on TravHQ.

Yatra, the leading online provider of travel services in India, has recently introduced TG Rooms and TG Stays. TG Rooms is their range of budget hotels while TG Stays includes verified homestays.

With 500 accommodations in 60 cities, TG Rooms and TG Stays will offer basic amenities to its budget travellers. TG Rooms will have free Wi-Fi and Air Conditioners while TG Stays will provide reliable and verified and comfortable homestays in prominent holiday destinations of the country. The starting price of such accommodations is INR 499.

According to the report, Sharat Dhall, the President of Yatra, quoted:

“Growing our hotel business is a key focus for us, and the launch of TG Rooms and TG Stays is another step in the same direction. With TG Rooms and TG Stays, we are looking to expand our inventory even further and offer travellers a diversified portfolio of budget accommodation options. TG Stays is targeting a new segment in the market by aggregating verified home stays, which are especially ideal for short vacations, weekend getaways and road trips that are gaining immense popularity amongst Indians…”

Dazzled by the kind of progress OYO Rooms is making in India, many small and big players have entered the budget hotel segment recently. After taking note of the opportunities in this space, almost everyone is trying to take a bite out of the pie. However there is more to it for the OTAs like Yatra or GoIbibo.

With brands like OYO Rooms and ZO Rooms expanding quickly, this was definitely expected from the OTAs (Read: Will budget hotel startups eat the OTA pie?). The comissions from hotel bookings drive large volume of business for the OTAs. With the kind of size these budget hotel startups are growing to, OTAs were under threat of being pushed out of the equation. With the entry in this segment, they will try to build up on their name and widespread network before the dust settles. GoIbibo recently introduced GoStays and there have been reports of MakeMyTrip working on something along the same lines. With the kind of reach Yatra has among hoteliers, reaching different geographies shouldn’t be Yatra’s biggest problem. The problem would be posed by budget hotel chains like OYO Rooms and ZO Rooms which have already grown big and are expanding aggressively.

Homestays are also starting to catch up and we will see them as a major trend in few years (Read: 5 upcoming travel trends in India). In India, Stayzilla is making most headlines in this space while Airbnb has been a party killer for hotels in many other countries. Over the years Yatra has built strong trust among Indian travellers and that can help drive people towards homestays with TG Stays. TG Stays has got huge potential as Airbnb isn’t a big name in India yet.

While they have made a move in homestays in time, we can’t say the same for TG Rooms. They will face stiff competition here and many others have a lead with the head start. Plus there will be more competition with other OTAs entering the picture and the price war might get even more aggressive.

What do you think will change with the entry of OTAs in this space? Do you think they can be a threat to brands like OYO Rooms and ZO Rooms?

The post Yatra launches TG Rooms & TG Stays, but is it too late? appeared first on TravHQ.

Cleartrip, the online travel service provider, is aiming 60% increase in hotel booking transactions. It has challenged its competitors by claiming that such transactions will double annually over the next few years. The online travel service provider functions in two major segments: Air Booking and Hotels. According to the company, 25000 transactions take place daily on their website leading to sales transactions of around $800 million per annum.

According to the report, Cleartrip President and Chief Operating Officer, Samyukth Sridharan stated that the hotel side has “such large potential that it would continue to grow at 100% for the next few years at least”. On the other side, the aviation side of the brand is expected to increase by 40% in the near future.

Although the growth of recently launched ‘Activities’ segment remains unclear, the company expects it to contribute around 15% of the total transactions in the coming years.

Cleartrip was launched in July, 2006 by Stuart Crighton & Hrush Bhatt. Competing with OTAs such as MakeMyTrip, Goibibo and Yatra, it caters to the needs of the Indian travellers through its website and mobile application.

The post Cleartrip aspires 60% jump in transactions, challenges the hotel booking industry appeared first on TravHQ.

A large number of people associated with the travel industry won’t paint a very pretty picture of OTAs more commonly called as Online Travel Agencies. They drive a large number of bookings to hotels in exchange for commission on bookings. Airline & Train bookings also form a large part of their business model but the hotel industry is their cash-cow. On the flip-side, Hoteliers always try to gain more direct bookings. Often they will lure you with discounts and upgrades if you book directly with them the next time around.

Hotels have to pay huge amounts in commissions to OTAs but that isn’t the only reason they try to get direct bookings. Paying commissions is good as long as hotels are getting new customers through websites like Yatra or MakeMyTrip. It can’t exactly be termed as customer loyalty yet but people have started picking their favourites among them. It is very common for people to discover the hotel through a native ad and then book through an OTA.

Hotels also lose the opportunity of direct relationship with the clients that book through the OTAs. In many cases, price is the driving factor for them and the next time around, they might book with some other hotel because of a small price difference. In case of a direct booking, the hotel could have offered a better deal to a returning customer in the name of a loyalty program.

But all this might change as the budget hotel chains like OYO Rooms and ZO Rooms continue to expand their footprint rapidly. These aggregators are joining hands with individual budget properties, rebranding them to maintain their quality standards and then drive bookings.

How do they work?

At this point most of the players in budget hotel segment are expanding their footprint across the country. They are aggressively signing contracts with new properties, offering them minimum room guarantee, giving them signup bonuses to revamp the properties and offering lucrative discounts to acquire new customers. Apart from offering bookings through their individual websites, they are listing the properties on OTAs as well. Let’s assume an OTA charges 15 percent commission on every booking (this could be higher in many cases) and the aggregator takes 20 percent. If the hotel pays the OTA commission, it will end up paying 35 percent overall and if the aggregator pays the commission, it will make just 5 percent off every booking. It isn’t a problem yet as most of the budget hotel brands are taking care of most of the commissions for now in a bid to get hoteliers onboard but things aren’t going to stay the same forever.

What has changed?

By now it is very clear that these budget hotel brands will restructure the Indian hotel industry (Read: How budget hotel chains will make an impact on the Travel Industry). The highly fragmented and unorganised market stands to gain a lot with the entry of these players. In the years to come, most of them plan to add hotels from even the Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities over and above the crowded Tier 1 cities. If you frequently book hotels through OTAs, you will notice that many hotels that were listed for ages are still there but now they are listed with a brand prefix. The number of such listings is going up as brands like OYO try to standardise and add as many hotels as they can. Hotels are happy to join hands with them for many reasons and judging by the pace at which these brands are expanding, we will soon see OYOs and ZOs flooding hotel searches.

There are plenty of hotels listed on OTAs with brand prefixes

What is the threat?

Judging by the current scenario, it appears that a large number of hotels from the unorganised segment will be a part of some hotel chain or the other in future. With the massive amount of funding some of these players have, the smaller players will fade away or get acquired. It isn’t going to happen very soon but this is a strong possibility you can’t rule out. Even if there are hotels operating separately, the number would be insignificant. In such a position, apart from the premium hotels, a large number of options you will find listed on OTAs will come from one hotel brand or the other. This is when they can pull the trigger, stop listing the properties on OTAs and focus on direct bookings.

Another reason why people prefer booking through OTAs is because of the experience they provide. They have huge teams fine tuning every little thing, from payment to interface, to provide the best experience. The budget hotel brands strongly rely on technology and have already got everything in place, from good websites to excellent mobile apps. When the time comes, they won’t disappoint customers with bad menus or slow website.

The way ahead

Of course the market is far from saturated at the moment and a situation like this is still years away. Despite expanding rapidly, the budget hotel chains still have a very long way to go. The small players will remain competitive as long as investors keep pouring in money. But it is something OTAs need to ponder upon. Revenues from Airline industry are volatile and Hotels & Packages account for around half of the revenues for many OTAs. The budget hotel brands have the potential to leave a dent here and maybe OTAs should start exploring other ways to profitability.

What is your opinion on this? Do you think the budget hotel chains can be a threat to OTAs?

The post Will Budget Hotel Startups eat the OTA pie? appeared first on TravHQ.

Even though we have entered the second half of 2015, social media marketers still continue to evaluate the true potential of Google+ and for most of them it is ranked after Facebook, Twitter and even Instagram. Having said that, the entire Google Plus platform has evolved a lot in the last couple of years as a result of which several brands have jumped forward and adopted the platform. The increasing presence of travel brands on Google Plus is a clear sign that they acknowledge the importance of this platform.

Why Google+ has an instant connect with Travel Brands?

In the travel industry, we offer memories and experiences to our customers and that is why travel brands rely heavily on the use of high quality images & photographs. Google Plus allows the display of gif animations that can be used to convey your brand’s message to drive user engagement. Another fact to keep in mind is that it is the brainchild of Google, the search giant. The reach of a Google Plus page also helps to increase your search engine visibility. You can track your page performance with analytical tools such as Page Audit & Ripples.

How can your brand use it?

If you are a travel brand looking to harness the power of Google Plus, ensure that you have a right strategy in place. Content duplication from other social networks isn’t a great start-point. Identify your niche, what you want to say and how it will be different from other platforms that will increase the relevance of your presence on Google+. Experiment with photos, use the editing filters and every now and then try a GIF animation. Ensure that your Google+ page and website are cross-connected.

Visual storytelling also works very well in promoting a travel brand. Whether you are a B2B or B2C brand, you can use Hangouts to boost interaction. It can either be a two way interaction or a broadcast. For instance, destination brands can do Hangouts on Air to talk about top things travellers can do in a city.

Relevant hashtags should be used on Google Plus like other platforms to be more visible. Hashtags like #ttot, #traveller or #travel are commonly used but you should use them with some less popular and brand or campaign specific hashtags. Using very popular or trending hashtag might give you instant visibility but soon your post will be lost in a sea of other posts competing with the same hashtag. A less popular one on the other hand will make the post visible for a longer duration. So it is best to use a mix of both types of hashtags.

You should also engage actively in communities that relate to your niche of products and services. For example a business offering adventure activities can interact with fans who are active in Adventure Travel communities. We found two communities having 41K and 34K members with people posting their experiences and asking questions. Try to get noticed by being helpful and don’t advertise directly.

How popular is Google+ among Indian Travel Brands?

Most global travel brands are having active Google+ pages to cater to their Indian audience. According to our research, Lonely Planet India has got the strongest following on Google Plus among all Indian travel brands. They have 687K+ followers with over 20M views (profile + content view).

Along with a good volume of visual content, they are actively using hashtags on their posts to increase the content reach. However, we would love to see Lonely Planet exploring the native features of Google+ more often.

After Lonely Planet India, Expedia India takes the second spot with 579K followers which comes as a bit of a surprise if you think of OTAs in India, MakeMyTrip, Cleartrip and GoIbibo take the bigger market share. We were expecting them to have a much bigger community however they sit at 7K, 4.5K and 2.5K followers respectively. Yatra.com has a similar story with 4K followers. They can look at brands like Lonely Planet India, Expedia India, ixigo or some international travel brand pages for some inspiration.

With informative videos and funny visuals, ixigo, the travel search engine has a following on 514K on Google Plus. If we take a look at travel media, Conde Nast Traveller India is quite popular on Google Plus with 525K followers but they are giving videos a higher priority while ignoring posts.

Follower count of travel brands on different platforms

For online businesses, Google Plus is a very important network that certainly can’t be ignored in the overall digital marketing mix. The activities on other platforms shouldn’t be diluted but you should consider allocating resources for this platform as well. It will go a long way in enhancing your online marketing efforts.

If your travel brand is hosting an interesting campaign on Google+, do tell us about it. We would be happy to feature it on TravHQ

The post Lonely Planet India: Best travel brand on Google Plus appeared first on TravHQ.