Couple of good figures have been released recently, for the online travel sector in India. Though not directly,this article on online travel in India by the Economic Times, estimates that the size of this industry in India would grow to $ 2 billion in India by the year 2008. There are already some early leaders in this game – Cleartrip.com, Travelguru.com and Indiatimes travel.
What’s interesting is that while travel portals are facing various pressures in other parts of the world (they are being squeezed out on one end, by airlines and hotel sites selling directly to the customer and on the other end are facing pressures from the search portals of the world, where most travelers start their travel searches), similar travel portals are hoping to make a killing in India. I think this is what is unique about the Indian situation. With so much of the services sector in India being largely disorganized, the Internet has a huge potential to serve as an efficient market place in India. So does the industry hope to get everyone who wants to travel, to log on to the net to make their purchases online?
Probably not, if they are smarter, they will probably bet on enough direct consumers and some middle men, such as online travel agents to log on and make reservations for consumers. This would be one example of the Internet enabling services in India, which I first talked about in my post this morning, on the Indian Internet Market opportunity. Why is this better than the already existing system of travel agents? Because there is more transparency in the system, the online agent, knows that his quote can be checked by the consumer going directly online. I believe the internet will morph into its own Indianized format, just as several other industries and markets have been Indianized since the opening of the Indian economy. The exciting thing is online travel is only the beginning, as was the case in the more developed internet economies of the world, travel is only the first frontier, there are many more to come.
September 4, 2006 at 2:53 pm |
Very true, my friend. It will be more convenient and one shall be free of touts.ITC has been doing a lot of good work for the farmers in rural area. The more transparency that happens ina ll the sectors the better it is for the common man.
September 4, 2006 at 10:19 pm |
Yes sir, I understand ITC has been quite succesful with its eChaupal. Will have to some more research on the area, but intend to do a piece about that pretty soon.
September 5, 2006 at 6:27 pm |
[...] It was reported by Exchange4media that the Indian Ministry of Tourism would spend $3 million on online marketing and web marketing. This is a pretty small amount. When compared to the amount that some of the online only travel websites are planning to spend only in the next year, this amounts looks considerably smaller. I wrote about the online tourism industry in India only yesterday. [...]
September 12, 2006 at 4:22 am |
[...] Jeffrey Grau writing through eMarketer comments on the economics behind the growth of the onine travel market in India. Refers to the same report that I blogged about previously on Online travel India posed to grow to 2 billion by 2008. The original study is done by PhoCusWright. What is more interesting is the subsequent details on sources used by online buyers in India to find retail ecommerce sites. With Search Engines coming at a firm 56%. See the full chart on the link below, courtsey of eMarketer. [...]