“There are only two serious OTAs; the rest are insignificant”

A A

Oct 30 2012, 01:18 IST

It’s been an action-packed year for travel portal Yatra.com. The year began with the acquisition of events and deals website Buzzintown. In March it made quite a buzz by signing Bollywood superstar Salman Khan not just as its brand ambassador but a stakeholder in the company as well. This was followed by the acquisition of another on-line travel agent (OTA) Travelguru in June. Yatra’s head of marketing and strategic relations Pratik Mazumder speaks with Brandwagon on reasons behind picking up Khan as ambassador as well as a partner and on the future strategy for acquired brands.

Edited excerpts:

The OTA space is quite cluttered with so many small and big players vying for a share of the pie. How does that impact your job?

I beg to differ. There are only two OTAs in the market—MakeMy Trip and us. The rest are insignificant. When we sit for our brand review meetings there are only two brands to discuss– MakeMyTrip and Yatra. The gap is significant between the top two players and rest of the travel websites. Our topline is about R 3500-4000 crore and MakeMyTrip clocks around Rs 4200 crore annually. Other players have not even touched Rs 1,000 crore. So there is no conversation about those brands who are four times smaller than us. And why are we just talking about the on-line space? OTAs constitute only 10-20% of the total travel space. There are mom-and-pop travel stores that have many customers and they clutter the space. It’s these stores who will

... contd.

Ads by Google

Single Page Format

1 | 2 | 3 | Next

Rotary award given Under pressure of business performance, ethics getting compromised, feel expertsHaryana’s Rs 700 cr contract under scanner Toyota headed to record global sales

Previous Story United Spirits shares tank over 9% Next Story Tata Sons buys more Trent shares

Reader's Comments| Post a Comment

Be the first to comment.