Companies like MakeMyTrip, Cleartrip, Expedia and ixigo have been investing a huge amount of money to upgrade their products in the market. “We have been pretty focused on driving tech innovation to create customer delight. Our business is about using technology to enable and enhance travel search and purchase experiences. Over the last couple of years, we have strengthened focus on the mobile channel as a growth driver. Our first mobile app was launched in 2011 and in June 2012, we became the first Indian OTA to offer a travel-booking app for iPhone users,” Rajesh Magow, Co- Founder &CFO & COO, MakeMyTrip, said.
ixigo.com, which claims to be the pioneer in bringing the travel meta-search concept to India in 2007, also adding a number technological products to its kitty. “With our ‘Trip Planner’ product, we have been at the forefront of innovation in the way travel knowledge is searched and consumed online through the use of semantic search technology that improves the quality of travel search results by intelligently deciphering what people are actually looking for and giving a rich and useful page as an output. We use Natural Language Processing (NLP) and intelligent search capabilities to provide the most relevant and useful information to the traveler in a user-friendly form factor,” said Aloke Bajpai, Co-founder and CEO, ixigo.com.
Cleartrip has also been consistently improving its technology to enhance travel purchase experience of customers. Noel Swain, Executive Vice President – Supplier Relations, Cleartrip, informed that Cleartrip’s approach is hugely towards investing in technology that solves customer pain points. “The most recent example of that is the launch of Online Flight Amendments. We are the first OTA in the world to be offering this facility,” Swain said.
Vikram Malhi, General Manager, South and Southeast Asia for Expedia, opined that Expedia has always been the technology leader in the OTA space. “We have always aimed at customising our solutions and innovations as per the demands of our consumers. Also, Indians are very good deal hunters, so keeping all these factors in mind, we have developed specialized products for the Indian market which have now become an industry standard,” Malhi said, adding that Expedia has launched products like Build Your Trip, 72 Hr Sale, Deal Hunter, Last Minute Deals and Expedia Travel App, among others.
Similarly, MakeMyTrip launched Routeplanner, an app that makes travel planning faster and easier. “RoutePlanner integrates availability of services like flights, buses, trains and cabs to display all possible connectivity options between any two places in India,” Magow said. MakeMyTrip continues to roll out new services built with a ‘mobile-first’ approach. “While smartphones is a fast growing segment, there is still a very large segment of users without a data connection. To cater to them, we have built an assortment of value added travel solutions that are available on SMS. Adding to this bouquet of services, recently announced the launch of India’s first SMS-based Bus-ticket booking service. This latest offering from MakeMyTrip enables feature/entry-level phone users to harness the power of ‘mobile’ by booking bus-tickets through an SMS,” Magow added. MakeMyTrip recently hit a unique milestone of over one million app downloads which apps allow customers to book flights, hotels and bus on the move, cancel their bookings, track the status of their refunds, send e-tickets and vouchers, check flight status and also look for alternate arrangements in case of last minute delays.
According to Bajpai, ixigo’s ‘Trip Planner’ is now the most comprehensive travel information site with detailed information, photos, maps, directions, timings and prices for more than 64,000 places to visit, things to do, hotels, restaurants and tourist places across India. “For travellers who don’t have a destination or specific holiday plan in mind, the website intelligently picks up the user’s location and provides “Weekend getaway” options along with “Trending Destinations” to choose from,” he said and added that the other area of innovation has been mobile apps. “We have introduced four innovative mobile apps in the Google Play Store (android app market) recently which seek to bring travel information to the palm of the users for specific use cases,” he stated.
Cleartrip’s consistent focus has also been to save time, save money and save effort for the consumer. ‘The latest developments at Cleartrip are Fare Alerts, Passbook support (About 25 per cent of our mobile users are using this feature), Pricewatch and Quickeys among others,” Swain said. Cleartrip’s belief in designer futuristic products continues. “This is why we’ve recently launched two huge updates to our Mobile Apps,” he added.
Trends shaping the shaping the next generation of travel
For Bajpai, one of the biggest changes in travel is the increasingly digitisation of information and the transformation in the way people use and access information. “Mobile services and apps, social media, search engine optimization, content marketing, are all changing the way travelers seek out information for their travel planning,” Bajpai said and added that there is also a trend of travelers opting for offbeat places such as Orcha, Drass, etc. for which, we have started receiving more queries on our product in comparison to the same period a year back. “We have also seen a sharp growth in ‘event based’ travel. People have started travelling extensively for music or dance concerts or fests, destination weddings, biking or backpacking group getaways, etc.,” he revealed.
According to Magow, there is now a shift in demand from relaxed vacation to activity oriented trips and experiential travel. “Indian travellers are now looking out for activities that enrich their lives, experiences that connect them with the people and culture of the destination. Activities such as white water rafting, short hikes and treks, skiing, ballooning, scuba diving, wildlife safaris are gaining popularity. There has been a robust growth of over 30 per cent in experiential travel this year,” Magow said. According to him, technology has not only changed the way travel is distributed, it has also affected the way travellers experience it. “Indians are getting more comfortable with accessing services and conveniences online. Today, customers are fairly confident of purchasing travel-products online from their preferred portals, or through mobiles,” said Magow.
Malhi thinks that domestic travel for festivals, travelling to newer lesser known destinations, taking up jobs that help you travel for free and big movie destination travel are going to shape up the next generation of travel. Swain also thinks that domestic travel and travelling lesser known destinations will pick up the pace.
Mobile and social media to change travel landscape
People now have the option of getting other travelers and consumers’ feedback on products and services available in the travel market. “User generated comments, Facebook comments and Twitter feeds has opened a new world of information for the consumer who wants to now find out what other people’s experiences have been with a certain product and service. This directly impacts the travel industry which will have to constantly innovate to keep pace with the rapid change in technology and access to information,” Bajpai said.
According to him, the digital disruption of the traditional travel industry requires the industry to find ways to communicate with the consumer, to get their feedback and provide them information that they can easily access across various social platforms and mobile applications. Magwo feels that with smartphones becoming increasingly popular among Indians the number of travel-related searches and bookings via mobiles has sky-rocketed in the past year. “Already, 10 per cent of our flight search happens on mobile and we believe that mobile apps will become an important sales channel for us in the coming years,” said Magow.
According to Malhi, mobile represents the next wave of customer connection and booking. “Worldwide, India is only second to China in number of mobile subscribers – 864.72 million as of December 2012, suggesting an extremely promising future in m- commerce. As far as online shopping and social media influence on it is concerned, in the year 2011- 2012, consumer interest in online shopping in India grew 128 percent compared to only 40 percent previous year,” Malhi added. Bajpai opined that mobile, increasing digitisation of marketing, semantic search and content marketing are the top trends in travel technology this year.
