<FONT COLOR="#FF0033"><B>IAMAI Online Travel: Search for the next big thing</B></FONT>

The buzz was evident at the ‘Online Travel: Are You Hooked?’ seminar organised by IAMAI and agencyfaqs! on Friday. There was the usual patting-on-the-back for the long way online travel has come in a very short time, and there were many visions of a bright future. But there was also circumspection, lots of it.

Deep Kalra, founder and CEO of MakeMyTrip.com, set the ball rolling in the inaugural session, which was moderated by Prashant Muttoo, general manager, travel, Times Internet Ltd. In his talk on ‘The Future of Travel Distribution in India’, Kalra spoke of a fundamental change in customer behaviour. “The walk-in customer has evolved to going online or even mobile, but walk-ins are still important for comprehensive services like tour packages.” He predicted a change here, with many pre-packaged holidays now moving online.

Mobile also made it to the discussion, with Kalra predicting that “WAP is not going to be the game changer, SMS is”. He also mentioned an upcoming deal for MakeMyTrip with mobile payment enabler Pay Mate, for an SMS ticket booking service.

‘Commoditisation of the Travel Industry’ was another phrase that echoed through the seminar. That’s not surprising, considering that most OTAs are still in customer acquisition mode. The key questions are, how do you get those customers and once they are on, how do you retain them?

Attempts were made to answer these in the last panel discussion, ‘Online Customers – Target, Engage, Fulfil and Retain’, moderated by V Ramani, CEO of Connecturf. In his talk, Ramani cited research showing that the customer was not very happy. Some 40 per cent of online customers of travel services surveyed by Connecturf expressed post-purchase dissonance, while 30 per cent went back to the offline channel.

In the same session, Mahesh Murthy, CEO of Pinstorm, explained how a search marketing campaign can go a long way in acquiring a customer. One billion ad impressions are created for the travel industry every year, he said.

Harish Behl, chief executive of travel search engine Zoomtra, said that it delivers 15 per cent conversion rates to travel websites. Again, emphasising search marketing, he said, “Don’t buy transactions, buy customers.”

However, no clear-cut route for retaining or engaging a customer came to light even as a member of the audience rightly said that travel sites were engaging in relentless “land grabbing”. Nikhil Rungta, head of marketing, Yatra, said defensively, “It is critical to implement CRM and loyalty programmes. Customers will choose sites which give them value.”

At the end of the session, one came away with the feeling that there was a lot of work to be done – especially in the realm of customer service. While luring customers with low fares may get them in the short run, it is providing them personalised packages based on their preferences that will matter in the long term.

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