Quick What mood are you in this summer?
Want to tan by the beach? Embark on a cruise? Go on an adventurous, treacherous trek? Surf the sea? Pamper yourself at one of the best spas in the Himalayas? Tuck in the most delectable delicacies? Or simply seek Nirvana in some sheltered corner?
Travel planners have all this and more. After enticing customers with exciting discounts on travel and hotel bookings clubbed together, they have now hot upon the novel idea of inveigling their customers with theme holiday packages. And with the ?opening up? of the Indian skies, even airlines such as British Airways, KLM, SAS and Qantas are holiday and business packages over and above special deals and convenient connections to gain an edge over competition edge.
Of course, the trend was kicked off when many Indian corporates threw their hats into the ?holiday? ring. Club Mahindra, the flagship brand of Mahindra Holidays and Resorts India, and Gold Flake Golden Getaways and Wills Holidays changed scene for Indian travelers both literally as well as figuratively.
What has happened recently is that a whole host of online players have joined the fray, taking the game at a different level altogether. The travel activity on the net is reflected in their media spending. Cleartrip.com, for instance, spent Rs 35 crore last fiscal and plans to jack up its media budget by 40% in 2007-8, mostly on TV. Makemytrip.com, likewise, launched a high voltage television campaign recently that guarantees a refund to customers who report dissatisfaction with its travel services. Its tagline ?…Humne toda vaada toh pay only aadha,? is surely clutter-breaking, but its potential can only be realised if the company lives up to the commitment.
At present, although a maximum number of travel inquiries get generated from the metros?Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai?mini metros like Secunderabad, Raipur, Nagpur, Aurangabad, Kolhapur etc, are also getting on the information highway to cut ?one night free on every three-night-four-day package? kind of deals with the travel portals. ?There is nothing like good deals to make them move out of their houses,? says a travel consultant.
Old wine in a new bottle did you say? But then these attractive packages are not just for foreign tourists are outbound travelers. The name of the game today is buying prepaid packages for domestic travelers, tailor-made to suit specific preferences in terms of destinations, hotels and sightseeing.
Of course, these are the same destinations?Rishikesh, Goa, Kerala, Rajasthan?except that these are now branded under various ?themes??spa, wellness, beaches, island, luxury, family, you name it! ?It makes navigation easy,? says Sachin Bhatia, co-founder and chief marketing officer of makemytrip.com.
Living up to its promise ?making travel simple?, Cleartrip.com goes one extra mile. It is even keeping tabs on who went where and on how many occasions to keep track of customer choices and offer better deals on these theme packages.
As per data complied by the portal for the month of January 2008, 27% of its customers chose a family destination (Manali, Corbett, Jaipur, Coorg), 20% chose luxury (Udaipur, Kumarakom, Corbett), 19% chose a beach location (Kovalam, Cochin, Pondicherry and Goa), 18% chose a spa (at Manali, Goa, Udaipur, Kumarakom, Jaipur), 8% chose ?wellness? theme (at Haridwar, Shimla, Bengalooru and Goa) and the balance 8% chose an island destination (Port Blair, Kochi and Digha).
In terms of traffic, the hottest destinations that season were Rishikesh, Goa, Kerala, Rajasthan and couples and groups of threes (friends) apparently made the highest bookings, when it came to theme holidays. ?The response was so good, we witnessed an extra 3,000 hits, translated into 25% increase in booking on our site,? informed the company spokesperson. In addition, ?Our booking size average has risen to 3.5 nights per transaction,? she informed.
All in all, the portal has 20 theme holiday packages. It has fancy names too?Island Holidays, Tribal Holidays, Beach Holidays, Wildlife Holidays, Spa Holidays, Heritage Holidays, Wellness Holidays, Gourmet Holidays, Yoga Holidays, Ayurveda Holidays and, yes, even Golf Holidays.
Sandeep Murthy, the chief executive officer of the portal said, ?Golf was regarded as an elite sport until a few years ago, but now with an exposure to a variety of audiences and its acknowledgement as a stress buster and networking sport, a number of three and five star accommodations have begun to offer golfing facilities within their vicinity and there are takers for these packages.?
Yatra.com also brands its packages by themes. In January for instance, it sold 40 adventure packages, took 175 backwater bookings, 1,308 beach booking, 293 pilgrim packages and so on. The demand for these packages obviously varies with seasons. ?Among beaches, Goa is an all time favourite,? informs the spokesperson for Travelguru.com, that arguably has the biggest portfolio of hotel accommodations (nearly 4,000). Travelguru, in fact, has thrown in places like Bundi, Hampi, Ujjain in its Travel Guide?the latest offering from the portal?that also brands places by themes.
Says Hari Krishnan, vice-president, product and marketing, Travel-guru.com, ?We are looking to offer about 100 Indian destinations by the end of March.? He claims that the portal witnessed a 150% growth after the launch of its ?Hotel Ka Guru? marketing initiative in September 2007.
Believe it or not, online travel is one of the largest e-commerce sales category in not just India, but the entire Asia Pacific region, according to an eMarketer survey. For the five countries (Australia, China excluding Hong Kong, India, Japan and South Korea) plus New Zealand, online leisure and unmanaged business travel sales totaled about $17.7 billion in 2007 and are forecast to rise to $41.7 billion by 2011.
The forecast is that from 2006 to 2011 online travel sales will grow at an astounding 24.8% annual rate, higher than the 23.3% rate for other B2C e-commerce. This indicates that travel is one of the key drivers of e-commerce sales in the Asia Pacific region. In India and China in particular, it is online travel spending that drives B2C e-commerce sales and also accounts for a majority of total sales.
Increasingly, Indians are becoming less wary of buying train and air tickets online, and sellers are beginning to circumvent logistics and delivery-related problems typically associated with the transfer of physical goods, thus increasing their stock with the repeat customer.
In this context, a JuxtConsult BrandMomentux study done in September-October 2007 using Google AdWords and AdSense predicts that except for souvenirs and picture postcards, the desire to buy other online travel products (mainly train and air tickets, besides holiday packages) is going to rise significantly over the next few months.