MUMBAI -
India's travel websites are energetically powering
the country's varied and growing online business,
with a market leader, MakeMyTrip.com, being voted
by global innovation tracker Red Herring as one of
Asia's fastest-growing technology startups.
Like many others in this burgeoning
travel-marketing tribe cashing in on India's
tourism and Internet boom, MakeMyTrip.com offers
corporate business travel, air tickets, hotel
bookings, car rentals
and
bargain-basement vacation packages.
Dhruv
Shringi, co-founder of another industry leader,
Yatra.com, estimates that online travel business
in India currently generates about 8% of the total
market. "We expect the market to grow to over US$2
billion by 2008 and continue to grow at over 20%
until 2010," Shringi told Asia Times Online.
Tourism is one of the Indian economy's top
earners, with prospects looking brighter all the
time. The latest Conde Nast Readers' Travel
Awards, a survey by the London-based global travel
journal Conde Nast, ranked India as the
fourth-most-favored country for vacations, above
Switzerland and South Africa. India has the
world's fastest-growing tourist economy, with the
industry growing at an explosive 13% annually over
the past four years.
According to the
Tourism Ministry, foreign arrivals in India
increased by 15% between 2005 and 2006, with more
than 50% being foreign business travelers. The
domestic-traveler segment is also expected to grow
by about 15% this decade.
Alongside the
tourism boom, India's Internet population is
rapidly growing. The Internet and Mobile
Association of India announced that one out of
every 10 urban Indians now has access to the
Internet, with the user base having doubled since
2004. India clocked 50 million Internet users this
March.
Inevitably, the two rapid-growth
sectors of the economy are strongly connected.
According to global market analyst Euromonitor
International, India will be Asia's
fastest-growing market for online travel by 2010.
Other top markets include Hong Kong, mainland
China, Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia.
Euromonitor believes that India's
ballooning urban population and Internet growth
over the next five years will make the country a
lucrative market for online travel retailers.
Euromonitor forecasts double-digit growth
in urban Indian households between 2006 and 2010,
giving India "a great potential for online
businesses and, as a result, great potential for
online travel retail".
A sign of these
good times is the success of market leader
MakeMyTrip.com, which was established in 2000
primarily to serve non-resident Indians heading
home from the United States. The site has a 4%
share of the non-resident Indian travel market,
which is estimated to be worth $1 billion, a 40%
share of the online travel market, and reports a
turnover of $130 million.
MakeMyTrip
claims a whopping 200% growth from the last fiscal
year, and reports having clocked 1 million clients
so far in 2007. It expects to double transactions
this fiscal year and aims to achieve a turnover of
$245 million in the near future.
"I think
the Indian websites are more comprehensive and
offer more advanced options compared to some of
their Asian counterparts," said Dhruv Shringi of
Yatra.com. He added that ticket sales of domestic
flights garner the most business. Yatra.com offers
travel information across 5,000 Indian cities and
small rural areas, and its investors include one
of India's top media companies, TV 18.
Another online travel retailer,
TripMela.com, announced a partnership with
TravelLab, a top European search portal, for a
travel metasearch tool focusing on the Indian
travel market. This will offer access to online
air ticketing and travel bookings through travel
agencies. TripMela.com describes itself as
"India's online publisher of airfare specials,
hotel deals, and great travel packages specially
tailored for Indian travelers".
With about
a dozen big players and the number increasing, the
online travel customer gets unprecedented
bargains. TravelGuru.com sells "sunny getaways"
for prices starting at Rs350 ($8.60), a cruise
aboard a luxury houseboat in Kerala starting at
$1, and hill-station vacations at $6.
The
team behind Travel Guru reflects the operational
needs of online travel websites. Chief executive
officer Ashwin Damera, a Harvard management
graduate, worked earlier with Citibank; co-founder
Ganesh Rengaswamy worked with software giant
Infosys; and others in the team include a
hotelier, travel-agency operators and consultants.
Non-resident Indians are also getting
their slice of the pie, with sites such as
TripYogi.com, which was founded by two Indian
entrepreneurs in California and offers a simple,
uncluttered homepage focusing on airlines and
hotel deals.
Such
telecommunications-oriented travel marketing could
be enhanced by mobile-phone services now offering
travel-ticketing options.
Vinton G Cerf, a
founding father of the Internet and currently vice
president of Google, has said the rapidly growing
mobile-phone user base in developing countries
such as India and China, and not personal
computers, will power the growth of the World Wide
Web.
(Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online
Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about
sales, syndication and republishing.)
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